Scuderia Toro Rosso chief race engineer Jonathan Eddolls has described the Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza as a “frustrating afternoon”, after not scoring any points.
Frenchman Pierre Gasly just missed out on points, starting in seventeenth position, working his way up to eleventh by the end of the race. His team-mate, the Russian Daniil Kvyat, was similarly all out of luck, suffering a DNF due to an oil leak.
“It was a frustrating afternoon for us as a team. We had a car that showed tremendous pace when we were in clear air and we were capable of scoring some pretty big points,” said Eddolls.
Eddolls said the lack of results was disappointing, as both drivers had driven well, and in the case of Gasly, he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Our first laps were good and we managed to take advantage of a few incidents. Unfortunately for Pierre, he lost a lot of time having to run off track to avoid a collision with Stroll as he was coming back onto the track. That cost Pierre some positions and potential for a better result.
“As for Dany, he had a really strong race, we planned to go long and use the pace of the car in the middle of the race in clear air, and he was pushing hard.”
Eddolls said the team tried to maximise the effectiveness of the Virtual Safety Car period, resulting from Racing Point F1 Team‘s Lance Stroll spinning off the track, pitting both cars, at this point also realising Kyvat had a problem.
The Virtual Safety Car came at the right time, so we pitted both cars and would have taken a big advantage from that, but once Dany left the pits we saw some smoke and then in the data we realised he had an oil leak. We decided to stop him on track to preserve the car for future races. It was unfortunate as seventh was possible for Dany.”
Putting the disappointment of Monza behind them, Eddolls said the team are preparing for the next outing at the Marina Bay Street Circuit in Singapore.
“On the positive side, the car is showing good pace, so we are happy to head to Singapore, a track where historically we’ve shown good performances. We’re confident we can take our learnings from earlier in the season and roll out with a good package to be competitive there,” he concluded.
