“It’s a shame that I had to retire, but I’m happy with the part of the race I competed in,” commented Scuderia Toro Rosso F1 driver Brendon Hartley. “I had a really good start and that was the first box ticked.
“I had to get around Stroll because he sort of stalled in front of me, but all the procedures that we’ve been working on were really good. During the first lap I lost a place to Pierre, which was a bit annoying, but after that I think I drove a pretty good race.
“I lost radio communication with my engineer for a long time, so that was tricky, especially during the Safety Car restart, trying to remember all the things I had to do! It took me about ten laps to get the radio plugged in again – it was quite difficult to find the hole!
“I think that we could’ve finished the race just behind Pierre if we hadn’t suffered a high oil consumption… We knew that there was a problem early on in the race, as I had to start transferring oil – I didn’t want to ask, but I had the feeling that we were not going to get to the end and we didn’t.
“Hopefully we can have a better race next time out in Abu Dhabi and close the season on a high!”
“From the very beginning of the weekend we suffered a lot of problems as we missed the first practice session, and both of our cars had to start from the back of the grid on Sunday due to penalties, commented Franz Tost (Team Principal). “The race was quite positive for us as Pierre closed the gap to the cars in front and showed a good performance.
“Unfortunately, we had to call in Brendon because of a high oil consumption which we need to investigate and which unfortunately didn’t enable him to finish the race. Now, we are looking forward to the last race in Abu Dhabi, where we can hopefully successfully defend our sixth position in the Constructors’ Championship.”
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