Franz Tost, Team Principal
“Twelve years after the great victory in Monza in 2008 with Sebastian Vettel, Scuderia AlphaTauri was able to repeat itself, again in Monza with Pierre Gasly. Strategy-wise, the team did a fantastic job in deciding to bring him in one lap before the safety car was deployed. Of course, we didn’t know this at that time, but at the end this was exactly the right call because at the restart of the race he was in P3 and was able to overtake Stroll into Turn 1. Hamilton had a stop and go penalty which elevated Pierre to the lead, and once he was in this position he was able to defend it until the end of the race, keeping Sainz under control. I must say Pierre drove a fantastic race. Daniil also drove a very strong race, he finished in the points although, was a bit unlucky with the tyre change. Normally, we would have liked to have called him in later, but in the end, he still finished in the top 10. This was the best possible result and we’re extremely happy. Last but not least, a big thanks to Honda for their very powerful engine and their fantastic cooperation. Now we are switching our attention to Mugello, where we’re looking to have another strong race.”
Toyoharu Tanabe, Honda F1 Technical Director
“A fantastic win today for Pierre Gasly and Scuderia AlphaTauri and it’s particularly special that we can celebrate this moment together after what was the 50th race in our partnership. It was an extra bonus to get the win at AlphaTauri’s home race. Pierre’s drive was fast and consistent and the team strategy worked perfectly, as did our PU. Combined with everyone’s efforts this delivered a great result. Congratulations to Pierre especially for his first ever F1 win, but also to everyone in the team. Honda is proud of our partnership which has got stronger step by step over the two and a half years we have been together. We hope our fans around the world enjoyed this afternoon as much as we did it and we thank them for their constant support. This was also the first race with the new PU mode restrictions and we have learned a lot over the three days at the track. Now we have plenty of data to prepare for the race in Mugello next week. Even though we won, it has been a tough weekend, especially as we had a PU issue in the race on Max’s car. We will look into the cause immediately and hope that we can have another strong race next week with all four cars.”
