It was an amazing day for us to finish sixth! Yesterday was already fantastic for the team, but this is even better! The car was mega, the strategy was fantastic, I just had to give everything I could which wasn’t easy in these conditions, in the end we managed to do it. After the past few races, which were quite difficult for us, it’s a great result for the team. When you’re fighting in the midfield you know there will be races where opportunities present themselves, and you just need to make sure you take them when they come. We did it in Bahrain, Monaco and again this weekend, so it’s great and it’s a nice way to end the first half of the season. I had a good start and managed to pass Sainz at the beginning, then I had free air to focus on my driving and make the tyres last and it ended up being a great race. The main thing was not to make any mistakes; I was on the limit for 70 laps which was a challenge, but I did my best to have a clean race and push as hard as I could to take these fantastic 8 points home.

I’m disappointed not to score points after a strong qualifying. I had a great start but decided not to dive up the inside of Gasly which ultimately lost me a place to Magnussen. My race was then destroyed as I was stuck behind Sainz during the first half of the race when he was on a harder tyre. We then reacted too early to Hulkenberg pitting behind and putting the Medium tyre, which didn’t give me the best performance. I fully understand why the team split the strategies but today it didn’t work out for me. I made no mistakes, I had a good start but unfortunately no points to show for it. I’m happy for the team to score more points which is a nice reward for all the hard work over the last months.

The team showed a good performance from the beginning of the weekend, Pierre was always around the top 10 in the practice sessions, which showed we had the pace to make it into Q3 and to score points. Yesterday, the weather conditions helped us a little bit and the team and drivers did a really good job to get the most of out the session, resulting in us lining up in sixth and eighth position on the grid. Pierre made a very good start, while Brendon got caught in a battle between Sainz and Hulkenberg meaning he dropped to ninth after the first lap. Pierre had a fantastic race where he controlled the tyres and the fuel consumption, and was able to increase the pace at will, which he highlighted towards the end of the race when Magnussen attempted to close the gap. Brendon was stuck behind Sainz and Grosjean, but was able to keep Hulkenberg behind him. I think with a better first lap he would have had the pace to finish in the points. Sixth position is a really good result and very important for the team as we didn’t score many points in the past few races. I’d like to thank the strategists, all the engineers and the mechanics for their incredibly fast pit stops. Now we have the summer break to look forward to, and with all of us recharged we will go to Spa and push for the second half of the season.

Our car worked well all weekend and this sixth place and eight points for Pierre is a very good result. It was partly down to the way we managed yesterday’s complicated qualifying, when the whole Toro Rosso Honda team did a very good job, just as they did today. It was a shame that Brendon missed out by one place on giving us a double points finish. We have had some tough race weekends recently, so it’s good to go into the summer break having finished in the points in the last two races. We hope to keep up that momentum starting in Spa.