Generally this has been a really positive weekend for me and one where we’ve made all the right moves. It was great to qualify ahead of my three nearest competitors for the first time yesterday and today I held position for most of the race, so it was pretty disappointing to lose out just a few laps from the end. I was happy with the way our race was panning out but on the prime tyre in the final stint I struggled a lot more and made a small mistake going onto the marbles, which caused me to go off. From then on, with those tyres, there was little I could do to recover. Although we lost out in the end, I think we have to focus on the positives. The car is a lot stronger and we are in a good place for the fight with the Caterhams.

All in all I think this is a weekend that was destined not to come my way, which is a shame as I love the Suzuka Circuit. We did our best to fight back and I was very confident in the way we would approach the race. Unfortunately, as I turned into the first corner on the opening lap, van der Garde hit my rear wing which pushed me off track and into the gravel. Nothing more to say really, except my thanks to the Team for a lot of hard work this weekend. We’ll be back to do better in India I hope because there are good signs for the car performance.

A disappointing end to a weekend where we’ve seen some very positive signs with car performance. Jules’ start was again fantastic this week and this enabled him to jump Giedo van der Garde. Had his race continued, then with the turn of pace that we saw on his long runs on Saturday morning, we feel sure he would have had a strong showing. Max was enjoying a good race and we were managing his pace well in order to ensure we made the two stop strategy work. Unfortunately he struggled a little more on his last set of prime tyres and he ended up running wide, which let Charles Pic through. Overall we have good reason to feel encouraged by many aspects of this weekend and we are looking forward to introducing some smaller developments for India, which we hope will continue to improve the pace of the car.