Daniil Kvyat finished the Russian Grand Prix outside the points in twelfth, with the Scuderia Toro Rosso driver feeling he lost time at the start, during the pit stop and whilst being lapped.
The Russian was eyeing a top ten result in his home Grand Prix but despite getting ahead of Kevin Magnussen during the pit stop cycle – the Dane had a five-second penalty to take during it for track limit offences – he found himself shuffled behind Lance Stroll, who finished 4.020 seconds ahead of him at the chequered flag as he suffered with the blue flags.
“My start today wasn’t the best and I lost a bit of time there,” said Kvyat. “During my pit-stop, we managed to get past Magnussen even though we then got undercut by Stroll and during my second stint I was unfortunately blue-flagged quite a lot and lost some more time having to let the leading cars by.”
Kvyat had initially criticised his team for bringing him early for his one and only pit stop, but now realises the reasons behind the call from the pit wall. He also was positive with the way the car felt during the final stint of the race whilst running in clean air.
“I’d like to point out that my first comments after jumping out of the car this afternoon were maybe a bit too hard on the team – after having sat down with my engineers I understand why the team called me in a bit too early for my pit-stop: at the time, it was a very difficult call to make and nobody knew that the leading teams were going to stay out for so long,” said Kvyat.
“On a positive note, the last part of the race, in clean air, was fantastic – we were flying and the car felt great! We now need to bring what made the car so good into the next races.”
