17.01.21 NL Blog
2020 in review, part 4: What’s next...?
“My first F1 at race at Spa was always going to be another learning experience, but it turned out to be extra tricky, unfortunately.
From the opening laps it felt like I had an imbalance on the car, which gave the handling a strange asymmetrical split. I had tons of oversteer through right-hand corners and understeer through the left-handers.
That made the car a real challenge to drive, especially early on in the dirty air, and I felt like I was just hanging on at the back. I got close to Kevin Magnussen at one stage but after that I was just dropping off.
The guys will strip down the car to see what they can find, but definitely something wasn’t right. It’s not an issue I have encountered before.
Despite this, the last stint was fun. I was going to do the one-stop strategy but I pushed to do two because I felt the handling was going to get worse and worse as the tyres deteriorated. On fresh tyres I was able to push flat out to the end, and I really had fun with the rears!
Overall then, I can’t be happy with the end result, but I wasn’t far off Romain Grosjean and two Ferraris, so there was still an element of positivity.
Above all, I know I’m improving with each session, and this weekend was another step forward. Okay, it was a struggle out there in the race, but at the same time I feel better off as a driver for having dealt with the issues I was facing and completing the whole grand prix.
It’s now on to Monza – a really high-speed track – and hopefully the setting for a stronger weekend.”
Quali | p19 |
---|---|
Result | p16 |
Race time | 1h25m26.556s |
Best lap | 1m48.048s |
Pit stops | 2 |
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