Haryanto, Marciello and Gasly discuss the race
GP2 Series: Rio, your third race win on the season and you made it look quite easy: how was it from your seat?
Rio Haryanto: It was everything in the first lap: I knew I had to make a good gap, and I did a really good start and was able to pull away quite a lot in the first two laps, and tried to build as much of a gap as possible because this year DRS means the car behind you might have an advantage. I was able to maintain that, to pull the gap from the beginning, and to also look after my tyres: it was not that easy, because I had some front graining, but in the end it feels really nice when you cross the line! Third win of the season, and so far it’s been a really good year for me.
GP2 Series: Marciello was there but didn’t seem to be able to close on you: were you conscious of him, or just concentrating on your line and times?
Rio: In the beginning my engineer was telling me to look after the tyres, because for the first few laps I was really quick and I did the fastest lap, and I was talking to him to know the gap and to conserve the tyres, because it’s still a long race and the tyres would be on the limit. But I think I did quite well to protect the tyres to the end.
GP2 Series: Does this make up for the disappointment from qualifying?
Rio: Yes, definitely! We had a great practice session when I was on top, and I was really confident about qualy but we had some problems and I had to start from P15. I’d say I was quite lucky that there were some incidents on the last lap, which put me up fro 10th to P8, and that made my life a bit easier today!
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GP2 Series: Lello, P2 and back on the podium: how does it feel to get back up there?
Raffaele Marciello: Yeah, it was a nice weekend for me: race one the pace was good, and also in race two, so we did a big improvement I think on the balance.
GP2 Series: You easily had the pace to hold the guys behind you back, but couldn’t stay with Rio: is that fair to say?
Raffaele: Yeah, Rio went away on the first few laps, and then after that we had the same pace because the gap stayed constant, but he had an advantage at the beginning.
GP2 Series: And then it was just look after the tyres to the end?
Raffaele: Yeah, I tried to recover a bit, I gained a bit, but it wasn’t enough.
GP2 Series: No issues with the tyres today?
Raffaele: No no, they were good, and also yesterday we had no problems with the tyres, which was a good improvement on our degradation, which was quite important.
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GP2 Series: Pierre, P3 and another podium for you: satisfied with your weekend’s work?
Pierre Gasly: Yeah, I think it’s pretty good considering I didn’t know the track on Friday morning, because I’ve never been to Silverstone before! It was a pretty solid weekend - P4 yesterday, P3 today - and I think it’s pretty good for everyone in the team to get the confidence back after all the problems we had at the beginning of the year, with crashes, bad luck and mistakes from ourselves. No, I think we are back where we should be at the moment, around top 3 or 5: we’re missing a bit of pace to fight for the win, but we’re working hard and I’m happy to see that we are back where we should be.
GP2 Series: The turning point was probably the start, where you squeezed by your teammate and got a bit of revenge for yesterday: was that satisfying for you?
Pierre: Yeah! I did my race, and I knew at the start I needed to make quite a lot of podiums to be in the fast group and to not lose too much time at the beginning, so for me it was important to take a good start and first lap. I then tried to take the same pace as the guys in front of me, and finally I was on the same pace as Marciello, so I’m pretty satisfied with the pace in the race, because it was what we missed in the start of the season, and we could pull a gap to Rossi behind me, who was really fast yesterday, so there was lots of positives for the weekend. We still need to work a bit on the pace overall, because we’re missing a bit: not much, but it’s good to be back to where I think we should be. We will keep working now towards Budapest, but I think our championship starts now.
