GP2 Series: Welcome to today’s press conference following the feature race here at the Hungaroring. Joining us today is race winner Alex Lynn from DAMS. In second place we welcome his teammate Alex Lyn and in third place we have Sergey Sirotkin from Rapax. Starting with you Alex: congratulations. This is your first feature race and you worked really hard to achieve it. How was it from the car?
Alex Lynn: Yeah it was slightly tense I would say especially around the pitstops time. I knew the team were asking for more pace from me which I couldn’t provide. I started to struggle a bit with tyre degradation on the medium. Then, when we came out on the option, it was a lot of hard work to try and catch up, but I’d say it was quite staggering really the difference between the prime and the option today. We really had a lot of pace on the option and in the end it made it quite simple. After I stopped, I was under pressure to make up the time.
GP2 Series: Were you worried you did not have the correct strategy?
Alex: I was 100% sure that we had the wrong strategy when I came out of the pits. But then, I’d say a big thanks to the team because they predicted that the options were working really well compared to the prime and in the last five laps we saw all the guys who pitted early for the primes started to struggle. In the end, it was all nice and a nice result, but at that time it was quite stressful. We didn’t know the options could go for fifteen laps and it went really well.
GP2 Series: Were you worried to push hard on the soft tyres?
Alex: Yeah I was really worried. It was a race to the unknown. We took a lot of experience from Bahrain where again the medium was a bit of a difficult race tyre compared to the soft in Bahrain. We took that knowledge and thought it could be the same and we took a little risk that paid off. In the end it was the right thing to do…
GP2 Series: Pole position, win… That’s quite a good weekend for you so far.
Alex: That’s a pretty good weekend so far, yes!
GP2 Series: Tomorrow you’ll be starting from eighth. What can we expect?
Alex: Well we saw that Pierre made a really good start today from fifth on the grid. Hopefully I can produce something similar to that. Let see if we can improve the car a little bit overnight on the prime and then I think anything is possible really. We need to keep control of the tyre wear, make a good start and let’s see what happens. It should be good.
GP2 Series: Pierre, Alex just mentioned it – it all happened at the start for you, from fifth to second. Take us through your start…
Pierre Gasly: Yeah I have to say everything happened at the start. I started P5 and I was just a second behind Alex at the first corner so I really thought that the win was possible. After the first lap I was quite close. I tried to push quite hard at the beginning but I think it was not enough to try something on Alex. I was all the time a bit too far to try something… But the pace was good. Like Alex said, it was a bit stressful before the pits because we knew that Stoffel and Rio were already a bit faster than us. So we knew we had to come back on the second stint with the soft tyres and we didn’t know the degradation on those tyres. I wanted to pit on the lap Alex pitted, but he had the priority. I had a terrible outlap with Mitch because I to defend on turns 1 and 2 and after again in turn 4. I went out of the track and picked up a lot of marbles. I lost a lot of time which cost me at the end of the race. I was a bit worried but I knew the pace would be good. The car felt really good all race long. I just had to really push on the second stint to overtake all the guys. I have to say it was quite hard work to go back to second. But it feels quite good. I’m really happy for the team to finish on the first and second position. It’s what we’ve worked for since the beginning of the year.
GP2 Series: It sounds like quite a relief…
Pierre: Yeah definitely. Since the beginning of the season, we haven’t been getting the results we were expecting and today the result is good. I still feel a bit disappointed because I really wanted to win especially after what happened with Jules… I really wanted to make it happen. Unfortunately I couldn’t today, but second is still a good result. We will try to win tomorrow from seventh on the grid.
GP2 Series: How are you planning to do that?
Pierre: As Alex said, everything is possible. I need to make the same start than today. I’m sure that if we can improve some things on the car overnight, the win can be within our reach. Let’s see what happens!
GP2 Series: Sergey, P3 today. Another podium finish for you. It was a tough race and you had to fight hard for this result. How was it from the car?
Sergey Sirotkin: Well like you said it was definitely the most difficult and the most deserved podium this year. We needed to have the perfect strategy and have everything perfect to get it. We were very unlucky yesterday during the qualifying session. We knew we had some potential and we really pushed for it. The team did a great job. The race pace especially on the option tyres was amazing. The pitstop was really good as well. I cannot say that we were lucky today, but this race went our way. It was a very well-deserved podium for us.
GP2 Series: And you took that podium in the last corner on the final lap. Can you take us through your move on Rio?
Sergey: All the overtaking manoeuvres I did on the option tyres were quite easy because I had much more grip than the others. That last move was not that easy. I think when I put my front inside he was just about to close. There was not much space to go. I needed to cut a bit to try and avoid him. We touched a bit and it was a difficult moment. I feel like I did everything right. We know the decision has been made regarding the move and luckily it’s in our favour.
GP2 Series: Did your team tell you that you were fighting for the podium because Stoffel had a time penalty?
Sergey: Yeah I knew it. My team told me two corners before I overtook Haryanto. They pushed me to make a move and I did. I’m always following my team’s orders (laughs).
GP2 Series: It’s another great result for you. You’re on a roll since Monaco. Tomorrow you will be starting from P6. What will be your objective?
Sergey: Well hopefully another podium. I will fight for it!
