Daniil Kvyat laid the blame for the incident that ruined his Eifel Grand Prix firmly at the feet of Alexander Albon, with the Russian ending the day fifteenth and last of the classified finishes as a result.
After the virtual safety car was deployed to recover George Russell’s car from the side of the track, Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda’s Kvyat was running just ahead of Aston Martin Red Bull Racing’s Albon, but the latter appeared to get the better restart and he pulled alongside the Russian heading into the final chicane.
Kvyat ran across the grass after leaving his braking too late, and Albon swept around him to take the position, only for the Thai driver to pull across the Russian before he was fully ahead. The contact ripped the front wing off of his AT01 and forced him to make an unscheduled pit stop for repairs after running a full lap with a damaged car.
“Not a good one today, my race was pretty much ruined from the moment I had contact with Albon,” said Kvyat. “I don’t know what he wanted to do but as a result, I lost my front wing and the car was massively damaged on the floor and brake ducts.
“I lost so much time doing that slow lap to the pits without a front wing, then the pit stop was obviously slow to replace it, so there wasn’t much I could do afterwards. The car was missing a lot of downforce, so I struggled for the rest of the race.
“I was just hoping for some rain or something to happen to be able to catch up, but nothing happened. It’s a shame because until that incident with Albon it really looked like it could have been a very strong race, I think we could have done well today.”
Jonathan Eddolls, the Chief Race Engineer at AlphaTauri, felt Kvyat was unlucky to suffer so much damage in the contact with Albon, and it took away the strong pace the Russian appeared to have prior to the incident.
“Daniil was very unlucky when he came together with Albon which caused him to lose his front wing, especially because at that time we really had strong pace,” said Eddolls.
