McLaren driver Stoffel Vandoorne, who made it into Q3 for the first time in his short F1 career during the weekend's Monaco GP , started from twelfth on the grid due to a penalty and ran as high as seventh during the flurry of mid-race pit-stops.
The Belgian racer then looked well positioned to bring home a point while running in 10th in the closing laps.
Unfortunately, he was caught out at the end of a late-race Safety Car period: with cold tyres and brakes, he understeered into the tyre-wall at Ste Devote, retiring on lap 66.
“It's a shame we haven't come away with any points. I think we'd all hoped to get a little bit more out of the weekend,” he said. “Towards the end of the race, I knew it would be difficult at the restart. It's always difficult to heat up the Supersofts, and we knew we wouldn't be able to cover Sergio [Perez] and Felipe [Massa], who'd switched to the Option behind the Safety Car.”
That wasn't an option for us – when you're in the top 10, you've got to keep your position. It was hard to get the tyres and brakes up to temperature, and I just had nowhere to go at Turn One, unfortunately.”
“So, this isn't the result we wanted this weekend, but there are still positives to take away from Monaco: we may still be lacking overall performance, but we've made some useful steps forward this weekend. There's still a lot of work to do – but I remain optimistic.”
