Red Bull Toro Rosso Honda driver Brendon Hartley is looking positive ahead of the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi following “a really good race” in Brazil on Sunday.
“That was a really good race for me. It’s annoying you don’t get to score points as a reward, but there weren’t any retirements at the front to capitalise on.”
He added: “I started on the harder compound so it was a bit tricky to for me during the first few laps, but I still had a strong start and made some good overtakes.”
Hartley suggested that his race performance was bittersweet, due to narrowly missing out on points.
“To make our race work, I knew I would have to keep the tyres alive as long as possible on the first stint, I had great feedback from the pit wall and the strategy worked well.
“I felt this is one of the best performances of my Formula 1 career without the reward of points.”
Hartley said that the team will now try and work out why they were able to perform so well in Mexico, and understand why there was such a deficit in this race.
“The team will work hard over the next weeks to understand why we had such good race pace in Mexico, but struggled two weeks later in Brazil.”
