After the elation of the Round 8 victory in Tokyo, Maserati MSG Racing wasn’t able to repeat their race-winning performance, with Jake Hughes finishing in P18 and yesterday’s winner, Stoffel Vandoorne unable to complete Round 9 following late-race contact.
With no qualifying yesterday and no threat of rain for today’s race day, Stoffel and Jake knew how important today’s session would be.
Stoffel was out first in Group A and felt comfortable with the car having made adjustments following FP3. He was ready to put in a strong push lap when Jaguar’s Mitch Evans had a heavy crash into the barriers, bringing a delay to the group stage. Stoffel did all he could, but traffic made the perfect lap impossible to achieve. He missed out on progressing to the duels by half a second.
Jake was in Group B, but it quickly became apparent that tyre temperatures were once again causing him issues. He too missed out on progressing to the duels by a narrow margin, the whole group covered by eight tenths of a second.
Trying to get the most out of the race, the team split strategies. Jake had the bolder early Attack Mode where Stoffel’s race was more measured and following the expected strategy. Jake’s strategy, however, was scuppered by a very late safety car for McLaren’s Taylor Barnard.
Being so late to be deployed, the window to add laps to the race had expired, giving Jake one lap to activate and complete his remaining two minutes of Attack Mode. He had to slow significantly in the final lap to comply to the Attack Mode regulations before taking the chequered flag, dropping him to the bottom of the classified order.
It was insult added to injury, as Stoffel had come into the pits as the safety car was deployed with heavy damage on his car. Nissan’s Norman Nato had a torque cut as Stoffel had been moving to overtake him, causing the two to have contact. Stoffel was briefly lifted into the air causing a broken front wing and a puncture which forced him to retire from the race.
It was not the sign off to the weekend Maserati MSG Racing were hoping for after the highs of yesterday. The team’s focus now turns to optimising qualifying performance, aiming to return stronger for the next rounds in Shanghai.
Jake Hughes, Driver, Maserati MSG Racing: “Overall, we can only say it’s a successful weekend; any weekend the team get a win is successful weekend. Today feels like a missed opportunity, not because we did anything wrong, but because we didn’t maximise qualifying. At the moment we don’t completely understand this tyre. In Free Practice 3, I was out the front always, around P2, P3, sometimes even P1, confident with the car. Then we put a different set of tyres on for qualifying and we’re at the back. It’s not reflective of the true pace of the car; we’re just missing something in tyre preparation which we need to understand. In the race, I got to a good place with my strategy, in the points, but unfortunately the safety car took away all that hard work. It was too late in the race for me, and I couldn’t fulfil the Attack Mode allocation, so I had to slow down about 60 seconds on the final lap to avoid an Attack Mode infringement penalty. We learnt a lot this weekend, we got a win for the team, so we go into Shanghai with, hopefully, some good momentum.”
Stoffel Vandoorne, Driver, Maserati MSG Racing: “It was a tough race today and unfortunately I didn’t finish. It was an unlucky accident with Norman; he had a power cut out of Turn 8, just as I was on Attack Mode and overtaking him. We had contact, my car took off which caused a puncture and a broken front wing which meant I couldn’t make it to the end. I think it would have been a decent race; we could have finished P9 with a couple of points. That would have been nice, probably the maximum we could have done today. We’ve got some work to do, got to improve our qualifying performance because it’s been a little bit up and down. Overall, leaving Tokyo with a victory so we can be proud of that, and looking forward to Shanghai.”
Cyril Blais, Team Principal, Maserati MSG Racing: “We have to self-reflect on today, we didn’t do the job in qualifying, so we started too far back. In the race, we split the strategy between our drivers and they both did their job, and both were up in the top ten fighting for points. Unfortunately, Stoffel had race-ending contact and Jake had the late safety car which neutralised both their strategic advantages. The safety car came one lap too late for Jake – otherwise he would have been fighting for points. It wasn’t our day today. We did what we had to in the race, now we need to focus and try to understand how to maximise our one lap pace because that’s what cost us today.”
Maria Conti, Head of Maserati Corse: “Today’s race finished off an extraordinary weekend in Tokyo. The final outcome includes not only a memorable victory, but above all the outstanding work of the entire team. Every race weekend is an opportunity for learning. From Tokyo, we take home some fundamental lessons to be implemented both off the track and in races so we can improve in the second part of the season. This country is one of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of development and innovation in technology, as well as being a key city within Maserati’s strategy, offering the possibility to meet our customers. Looking ahead, our firm goal remains to keep performance at its peak and to get closer to the leading group so we can improve our results. We bring Maserati’s competitive DNA to every round, taking us closer and closer to our brand’s centenary in motorsport, a milestone to which the countdown has already begun.”
