Frederic Vasseur stripped by Red Bull

Frederic Vasseur’s words

Frederic Vasseur took stock of the situation after the Baku sprint race: “We pushed harder than we expected in the first laps to keep up with Perez but we have to figure out where we can improve by tomorrow because it will be a different story, with at least two stints and different compounds, but we will try again. It will be different than today because we will use different compounds on a track with different temperatures, and we will also have to play strategy. Degradation can hurt you more when you are behind a car, whereas when you have clean air you can go better, and Carlos proved that. On Friday we didn’t do a long stint in free practice, doing three or four consecutive laps, and it’s also true that we didn’t test the medium tires at all. We only did it today, but it was the right tire for a short stint. We have confidence for tomorrow, but it will be another challenge. Already in Melbourne the pace had improved, although we didn’t manage to get into the points, in qualifying the pace was good and it wasn’t bad in the race for Carlos, and now we have to put it all together and get into the points.””

“Tomorrow I think we will be more competitive than we were in Melbourne. The pace is there, we went to the pole and progressed from Sakhir and Jeddah. We were ahead of Red Bull in qualifying, but in the race it will be a challenge because they are ahead with top speed, which is crucial here. When Perez opened the DRS it was a space rocket, and in a race like this it is decisive. Tomorrow we will have another opportunity, with different compounds and strategies, and we will be in the fight.”