At the start I managed to avoid Bianchi who was slow off the line but I was behind Chilton going into turn one. After the safety car went back in Bianchi managed to get ahead so I focused on pushing to the first stop where really good work from the pitstop crew helped me jump Chilton, and I held that place comfortably up to the second stop on lap 32. The car balance was ok – there was a bit of understeer, less than on the supersofts I’d started on, but I didn’t have the outright pace to catch the cars ahead. When we boxed again the guys did another great stop and helped put some more time between Chilton and me so I didn’t have to push the second set of softs too hard on the first few laps of the third stint. I pulled away from Chilton and then when Sutil span we boxed for the last time to finish the race on another set of supersofts. 16th was about as much as we could have done today – we didn’t quite have the performance to catch Bianchi so now it’s on to Hungary next week for the last race before the August break.

I started from the pitlane so it was always going to be a struggle today. Obviously the safety car on lap one helped but I had to serve the ten second stop / go we’d incurred for breaking parc ferme rules last night after the issue with the power unit straight after the safety car came in, and from that point I was having to try and play catch up for the whole race. My first pitstop was on lap 18, going from supersofts to softs for the second stint, and when I rejoined the blue flags for the leaders meant I started losing more time and there wasn’t anything I could do to try and make up time to the cars ahead. My laptimes were pretty good, relative to the pace we could manage today, so I just kept pushing, right up to the second stop on lap 41 by which time that set was done. We went back out on supersofts for the final stint and I was told I could push to the flag. I made up some time on the Marussia ahead but with about five laps left that set was completely gone so I couldn’t close the gap up enough to fight Chilton and finished the race in 18th.