Racing Point F1 Team Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer has taken away “lots of positives” after the team’s performance during the 2019 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix.
Reliability over the course of the weekend was solid and the pace in qualifying and race was clear enough to see the British team in the midfield battle.
Sergio Pérez made it into Q3 in tenth, unlike Lance Stroll who had been knocked out in Q1 in sixteenth.
After the only round of stops, Stroll had found himself in the points in eighth while Perez had dropped to thirteenth place by the finish after but stuck in a group of cars battling for position.
“I’m delighted to see Lance score points in his first race with us,” Szafnauer said. “It was a very mature drive and he thoroughly deserves this result.
“Scoring points is a great way to start the season after the huge effort back at base and trackside over the last few months. It’s a shame Sergio’s strategy didn’t work out because we had a chance to get both cars in the points today.
“We saw, once again, that overtaking is extremely difficult around Albert Park and getting stuck in traffic after his early stop proved very costly.”
Now that Australia is done and dusted, Racing Point can switch their attention to the 2019 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix – Bahrain International Circuit on the 29-31 March for the second race of the campaign.
“We take away lots of positives from this weekend and have learned a huge amount from all the testing we did in the lead up to the race,” Szafnauer said.
“Now we switch focus to Bahrain and a very different track. We will keep pushing, keep developing and we hope to take a step forward and get both cars in the top ten in a couple of weeks’ time.”
