Obviously, I've got more points than ever before, but, for sure, it was not the best race of my life. We had a chance to get to the top position at the Bahrain Grand Prix. Well, we tried our best, but it was not enough. We finished second and I've got my first podium after a couple of years.
The weather was good. Finally it was consistently warm. Our car likes that and it felt really good after we had the proper set-up work done on Friday better than in the previous race weekends.
The key factor was the tyre degeration. It's the same for everybody, but everybody can approach it in their own way. We decided to gamble the qualifying and went accordlingly through it. To save new tyres for the race, we did only one lap in Q2. We knew it will be tight, and we lost it. But still I had a encouraged feeling for Sunday.
After the race in China and after the qualifying in Bahrain, people probably started thinking that we are idiots and cannot do anything right. But we showed in the race why we did what we did. It was close already in China and this time our strategy paid back very nicely for us.
We were at our fastest speed while it counted. I managed to overtake Romain and after that I've was hunting down Sebastian. It was close getting past him, too, but I would have needed more than one chance to make it. Now I chose the wrong side for braking, Sebastian survived and after that, I pretty much knew, that was it.
Of course, I wanted to win. I would have been much happier myself after the race. But, most of all, it was a great result for the team. The team gained many places in the contsructors' championship, while finally we got both our cars in the points and, most of all, in the podium as well.
Only McLaren has had two cars in top 3 in the season like us. That shows how tight and how close it is with so many top teams. You have to get everything exactly right to be at the top. Small mistakes or a measured risk like we had and you are out from Q3 and most likely out of podium, too.
Now the team is back up where we belong. The Bahrain result was good, but it's not good enough for us. We will push even harder to get good results on regular basis. I wouldn't count on winning, but you never know how it goes in motor racing.
Next step is testing in Mugello. For Barcelona we have again some new parts and also some good data from the winter testing. Let's wait and see how it goes there in two weeks time.
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