2022 São Paulo Grand Prix

Dave Robson, Head of Vehicle Performance: Another difficult day and we struggled for pace throughout the race. With the early safety car, we were able to switch Alex to an effective 2-stop race using only Medium tyres. With the 2nd safety car coming shortly after Alex had made his final stop, most of the tyre advantage we were accruing for the final stint was lost. At the restart Alex suffered with a loss of power, which took us a couple of laps to recover and he was unable to make any further progress.

Nicholas ran a short stint on the Hard compound, but this was a poor tyre today and, coupled with a slow pit-stop, dropped him off the back of the pack. The 2nd safety car gave him a chance to recover and to race Alex over the final laps, but it was otherwise a frustrating day.

Alex Albon: Our race was okay, but we got unlucky with the safety car, with everyone in front of us getting a free pitstop, ultimately compromising our whole race. We did a good job and in terms of the race, I was happy how I was driving, and it looked like we were optimising the race. I do think we may have made an error with our start tyre as everyone else was on the softs and mediums, but the safety car gave us an opportunity to immediately swap to a 2-stop Medium race. It’s unfortunate but we’ll look forward to the next and last race of the season.

Nicholas Latifi: The car was better today in the race. We had damage yesterday on the floor, which we repaired overnight and so the car was feeling better today. I had a big flat spot on the first lap which affected the first stint pace. It was then unfortunate we had a slow pitstop and struggled on race pace from there. The safety car gave us a little bit of hope at the end, but I wasn’t able to catch up to the pack.