I was very pleased with the start and the race in general and happy with my performance, but it was another one of those races where we just didn't have enough pace to pick up points. It was challenging, but I thought for the package we had it was a good race and I am happy to have been fighting with the McLarens and to have finished in front of one of them. We went really long in the first stint, which was good, but the wind picked up a little bit in the second stint and really impacted the performance of the car on the ultrasoft tyre, so I went downhill from there. Now I shall recharge my batteries as it has been a long year.

It was a really bad race. I didn’t get the best start and straight away I lost a lot of ground and wasn’t in the best position for the next sequences of corners. I had problems with the car overheating so for one third of the race I had to do massive cooling. It was such a painful race, such a painful stint. I was trying my best to cool it down as quick as I could but as other cars pitted and came out behind me, I tried to fight, protect and cool the car at the same time and it was a mess. I didn’t enjoy it. It has been a very, very painful race. I really wanted to enjoy it and it’s just so painful to finish the season like this.

That brings an end to an incredibly long season and a very difficult one for the team, possibly the most difficult in its history. We see this as a year of transformation; the team has stuck together through some very difficult periods, and this will bring us back even stronger in the future. Thank you to Lance and Sergey for staying level and professional throughout, and especially to the team in the garage. It’s the same hard work whether you’re winning or losing, and they’ve stuck together and continued to win fastest pitstop awards in amongst our general poor car performance. It’s a great team spirit and that will sustain us and support us in the winter to come back fighting next year.