Daniil Kvyat achieved his second highest finishing position of the year at the Sakhir Grand Prix. Kvyat crossed the line in seventh place, and came at a good time FIA Formula 2 Championship driver Yuki Tsunoda has been linked with taking his seat.
Kvyat spent a lot of the race with a charging Daniel Ricciardo behind him after getting the undercut in qualifying. The safety car came out due to a rogue nose cone left over from and incident involving Williams Racing new boy Jack Aitken, this hindered Kvyat but helped the likes of Esteban Ocon and Lance Stroll.
The Russian felt like he could have done more with his race, especially as he had started in sixth place. Despite this, he is still very happy with how his race and the weekend went as a whole.
“This was a very good weekend for me and I was hoping for an even better result today – when the safety car came out I thought ‘this isn’t great timing for us’ but still, 7th is not bad. We did everything right today as a team, I had a perfect qualifying yesterday, I drove really well for an almost perfect race today and I’m very happy with my performance,” said Kvyat.
“It was a strongly executed race and the best weekend of the year for me. The pace was there and we were close to the top of the midfield, there was one point where it was Carlos, myself and Ricciardo separated by just a couple of tenths, it was very on the edge and entertaining. It’s great to bring home some much-deserved points.”
Pierre Gasly had a weekend to forget after falling out of the points from a ninth place starting position.
Gasly was also caught out by the Aitken safety car, the Frenchman spent a lot of the race changing places and battling with Lando Norris and had some great pace however that was all taken away from him when the pack bunched up behind the safety car. He lost his battle with Norris, who finished tenth.
Gasly said: “It was a very tough race today. We lacked pace and I just didn’t manage to do what I wanted inside the cockpit, I struggled with the rear and had a lot of understeer. In addition to that, we were also pretty unlucky with the timing of the virtual safety car.
“It was a crazy race and looking at the final podium, there were big opportunities today and it’s just a shame not being able to be in the mix for this fight. We need to have a look at the data to understand why it was so different today in comparison to Friday and what we could have done better, to try again and finish the season on a high in Abu Dhabi.”
