Szafnauer Delighted with Stroll’s Turkey Performance, Rues Vettel’s Failed Tyre Gamble

Otmar Szafnauer felt Lance Stroll drove ‘superbly’ during Sunday’s tricky Turkish Grand Prix, with the Canadian securing two points for the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team despite a slow pit stop costing him valuable time.

However, Sebastian Vettel’s chance of scoring points was ended when a gamble to switch to medium tyres backfired, with the German dropping like a stone on his out lap.  On his lap out of the pits, he twice went off the track and was forced to crawl back to the pit lane for fresh intermediate tyres.  With no tyre temperature he even suffered a half spin entering the pits, and he was restricted to running at the back of the field for the rest of the day.

Szafnauer, the CEO and Team Principal at Aston Martin, says Vettel’s gamble did not pay off, which sometimes happens when conditions are as changeable as they were in Turkey, but at least the team came away with points from the weekend.

“Lance drove superbly in incredibly tricky conditions, and, despite a slow pit stop, thereby scored two valuable world championship points as a result of his excellent ninth-place finish,” said Szafnauer.  

“Sebastian also started well and was running in a solid top-10 position for the first half of the race, but he then took a gamble on a change to dry tyres [Mediums] which did not work out – he had no grip at all. The very next lap he consequently had to come back in for new Inters, but by that time his race had been compromised too severely for a points-scoring finish to be a possibility.

“It was one of those things: a gamble that simply did not pay off, which is how it goes sometimes when conditions are so difficult.”