RB F1 Director Mekies praises the team’s improved performance in Singapore, signaling a competitive resurgence despite scoring no points.
Laurent Mekies, RB F1’s director, welcomed his team’s return to form in Singapore, though he expressed frustration over the weekend not unfolding as hoped, despite promising signs on Friday.
“It’s an overall better performance than in recent races, yet not enough for points. Nevertheless, we seemed competitive from Friday with Daniel and Yuki,” Mekies stated.
“Yuki then put in a strong qualifying to make it into Q3, which was very encouraging. Starting eighth on the grid, we were hopeful for points.”
“Unfortunately, Yuki lost three places at the start, and from there, it was always going to be very difficult to overtake. Our starts haven’t been good enough this season, and it’s something we’re working very hard to improve. In a tight field like ours, it makes the difference between scoring points or not.”
“On the positive side, Yuki had a very good final stint on the soft tires. It was a bold choice to keep him on this compound for so many laps, but it worked and gave us a good pace advantage, even though it wasn’t enough to get back into the points.”
Mekies, who refrained from giving solid information post-race, praised Daniel Ricciardo’s efforts: “Starting further back, we really needed an opportunity with a Safety Car for Daniel to come back into the points fight.”
“He adopted an aggressive strategy by starting on soft tires and managed very good laps in the race, but he had no chance of returning to favorable positions after falling so far behind. He never gave up and fought throughout the race.”
“And as I said after the race, considering it might have been Daniel’s last race, we wanted to give him the chance to enjoy it and leave with the fastest lap.”
“We now have a few weeks to prepare our final effort for the last part of the championship and the two upcoming triple headers. The competition is tighter than ever and we will do our best.”
Highly performant in free practice on Friday, RB F1 attempted an aggressive strategy to no avail, as explained by the performance director: “Starting from 8th place, we hoped to finish closer to the points with Yuki. We lost ground at the start and were 11th at the end of the first lap, which greatly affected us.”
“We had an aggressive strategy, pushing far with the medium tires, but we lacked a bit of pace to stay with the cars ahead of us. The soft tire was well managed, and we closed the gap to Colapinto, but we were too far to put him under pressure at the end of the race.”
“Regarding Daniel, we wanted to pit him early in the race because traffic impact is significant here. The first part of his stint on medium tires was competitive and well managed, but he started losing a lot of ground while battling with Gasly.”
“We clearly lack some pace compared to our direct competitors, so that’s something we’re going to analyze to see what we could have done differently, while preparing as well as possible for the next three races,” concluded Guillaume Dezoteux.
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Mekies Sees Hope Despite F1 Point Drought Mekies Sees Hope Despite F1 Point Drought
