Andrew Green was pleased to see the Racing Point F1 Team continue their points scoring run at the beginning of the 2019 Formula 1 season in last Sunday’s Chinese Grand Prix, and he attributed this down to the great first lap for Sergio Pérez.
Pérez jumped up from twelfth on the grid to run inside the top ten on the opening lap and maintained a strong pace thereafter to claim eighth, the best result of the season for Racing Point, finishing just behind Renault F1 Team’s Daniel Ricciardo and just ahead of Alfa Romeo Racing’s Kimi Räikkönen.
“We leave China with four more points in the bag and today’s result means we’ve scored points in every race so far this season,” said Green, Racing Point’s technical director.
“Sergio drove a skilful race and managed the tyres well. He got himself in a good position on lap one and stayed out of trouble to bring the car home in P8.”
Unfortunately for the second Racing Point of Lance Stroll, points were just out of reach, mainly due to the Canadian losing out to Alexander Albon during the first pit stop cycle. Stroll was unable to find a way back ahead of the Scuderia Toro Rosso driver and ultimately finished twelfth after a late race pit stop gamble.
“Lance was close to scoring points today, but just didn’t have the track position to make the one-stop strategy pay off,” said Green. “Losing out to Albon at the first pit stop proved costly and he spent most of the afternoon chasing the Toro Rosso, fighting for the final point.
“We switched Lance to a two-stop strategy late in the race – taking a gamble – and giving him the final few laps on the soft tyre. He managed to pass Magnussen on the final lap, but there were a lot of blue flags to deal with which made things tricky.
“He made a great start and drove well, but the strategy didn’t quite play out in his favour today.”
