My start was ok but into the first corner I had to brake early to avoid hitting one of the cars ahead and lost a couple of places. We went onto the mediums for the second stint and they held up well. The car balance kept improving as we went through the race and we stuck to the plan, pitting for the last time on lap 37 so we could run a long final stint to the flag. With about ten laps left I caught and passed Chilton and was given the instruction to push to the flag. From that point I couldn’t really gain on the car ahead so I just made sure we got to the end without any issues and finished the race 18th.

Today wasn’t a good day for me. I want to say sorry to Mark for the incident we had and I’ll make sure I learn from the stewards’ decision on the five-place penalty for the next race. Sometimes you make mistakes, but the important thing is to accept them, learn from them and move on. In the race itself I had a great start, passed four cars and was up to 17th by lap two. We’d started on the supersofts and the first set were done pretty quickly so we boxed on lap eight for a set of mediums and my pace on those for the first few laps was ok. I’m not sure why but not long into the stint the tyre temperatures started coming down and my laptimes dropped straight away. It was pretty frustrating as there was nothing I could do to get them to work so I just had to keep pushing on. On lap 33 I came back in for another set of mediums but then I had to box for the stop / go I had from the contact with Mark. The temperatures went straight up after the penalty and I had to come back in almost immediately so we could check the car and they found a visor tear-off in one of the radiators which had been causing problems for most of the race. Shortly after that I was heading towards the hairpin with Hulkenberg alongside. I moved over for him but he turned in in front of me in the braking zone and we made contact and that was the end of my race.

A very bad day for us, to say the least. Since the start of the weekend we had a feeling that the race would be difficult for a number of reasons. First, in terms of aerodynamic setup, we never managed to find the right compromise between top speed and downforce with the parts available. We spent a lot of time on this issue, maybe losing sight of other important areas like the tyres and to what extent the very different weather conditions we had on the earlier part of the weekend and on Sunday and how dramatically that would affect tyre behaviour in the race. This is an area we must particularly investigate as our direct competitors went for a different strategy that clearly gave them an edge. The high tyre degradation, especially on Giedo’s car, meant that he received his first blue flag very early in the race and that contributed to the unfortunate events in the race that we never want to see as a team. Today’s race in Canada put a rather radical stop to the positive trend we have seen since Bahrain, and we have to reverse that for Silverstone and come back fighting there. We will have new parts for the British Grand Prix and we’re running another aero test next week, so we hopefully have the chance to make amends.