Russian Grand Prix – Racing Point’s potential with their latest batch of updates hasn’t been fully realised yet, but they’re hopeful of rectifying that in Russia.
Racing Point brought their final update package of 2019 to the Singapore Grand Prix, the last update of three quite comprehensive upgrades they brought throughout the middle third of this year as they began to enjoy financial stability under their new owners.
However, Singapore turned out to be a damp squib of a race for the team. Both looked like late contenders for a lower points finish but Lance Stroll clipped the wall on one of the Safety Car restarts and had to pit again for repairs. After some great battling, Sergio Perez was forced to retire with an oil leak, the team pre-emptively shutting down the engine before any damage could occur.
Heading back into more ‘normal’ circuits like Sochi and Suzuka, the team say they’re aiming to understand their latest updates as the stable regulations for 2020 mean that learning about their current car will still have benefit for next year.
“We had a messy weekend in Singapore, but took away some positives too.” said team boss Otmar Szafnauer. “The race pace was competitive, although we couldn’t really demonstrate it given our starting positions and race circumstances. The race seemed to be coming to us, and it looked as though points were within reach, but we ran out of good fortune in the end.”
“It’s one to take on the chin and bounce back in Sochi this weekend. The updates we introduced in Singapore have given us a performance step and I think the races coming up will allow us to extract even more from them.”
Lance Stroll agreed with his boss, saying: “We introduced a decent update in Singapore and there’s still some fine-tuning to make sure we get the most from it. Sochi will give us a chance to do that.”
