Hartley feels pit strategy cost him points finish in Budapest

Brendon Hartley believes that race strategy cost the Toro Rosso team valuable points at the Hungarian Grand Prix. After a superb qualifying result for the team, Hartley was unable to capitalise and finished outside of the points much to his disappointment.

Speaking to the media after the race, Hartley said he felt that the race was going well up until the pit stop window, after which the race started to spiral after having looked so positive at the outset.

“I’m disappointed with 11th place. I had a really good start and got my nose inside Pierre’s car going into Turn 1. Obviously I had to get out of it, as he braked pretty early and that worked really well for him.

“I ended up losing the place to Kevin, but I had very good start and I almost got Carlos too. In the first stint he was on the hard tyre and I was on the softer compound, so I had a lot more pace but there was no way to overtake.

“Then we pitted very early for the Mediums. I haven’t talked to the team about the exact strategy but what is clear is that didn’t work out for us.”

Hartley also added that he felt he lost a lot of time allowing the race leaders through and that if he had extended his opening stint in the race a bit more, he might not have had such a headache later on in the grand prix.

“The race could have been much longer. I saw we put new tyres on when we boxed but then going on to the harder compound tyre, which was much slower very early on.

“That meant that the people that stayed out on the softer compound were quicker and I got the blue flags so it was a double negative.

“I haven’t seen all the details on how it played out but we lost a lot of places on that strategy and that’s how it goes sometimes. I think what triggered the early stop was Hulkenberg pitting behind me.”