Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat was revealed to secure a podium finish in F1 German GP post his return as Alexander Albon states he didn’t want to fight Lewis Hamilton.
The mixed conditions was exactly what the midfield F1 teams needed in German GP at Hockenheim to be able to penetrate the Top 3 teams and make a name for themselves. After multiple safety car periods and many incidents, the top half started to look settled.
It had Red Bull Racing’s Max Verstappen, Racing Point’s Lance Stroll, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, McLaren’s Carlos Sainz and Kvyat with a chance to score a podium. Among the parties, Verstappen was already up ahead, leaving Stroll and Kvyat to fight each other.
Kvyat moved ahead of Stroll as Vettel started to catch up and eventually passed the Canadian to move to third. It was an easy work then to clear Kvyat, who had enough to hold off Stroll and secure his first podium since the 2015 Chinese GP.
The Russian, who became a father on Saturday night, became only the second driver to score a podium for Toro Rosso after Vettel’s heroics in 2008. Considering his up and down career, Kvyat was a relieved driver in the end with a lot of weight off his shoulders.
“It was an incredible race for myself, a lot of things going on,” said Kvyat. “I guess it was the same for everyone. The beginning of the race was so-so, I think, I was always around the top 10 and I thought some points were possible today.
“The first when I chose to go on slicks, it was the wrong moment. The second time I think it was the perfect moment and when I saw that others didn’t pit for slicks when I did i thought that’s our moment and I was right and I exited in P3.
“I had to overtook Stroll for P2 and then from there I just had to hope that quicker cars would take time to catch me at the end of the race. I’m very happy with this podium. It’s fantastic also for the team – 11 years since the last podium, which Sebastian did in 2008.
“I think everyone is very happy and we have to be happy. From my side of course I would dedicate this podium to my girlfriend Kelly and to my daughter. It has been an incredible few years in my life with a lot of realisations in my life.
“That’s because it was sometimes tough times and I thought maybe F1 was over for me, and maybe I thought, especially podium, I would never ever have it again, but life just proves that if you work hard and never give up, things are possible.
“I think that’s exactly what happened. Even the race was tough for everyone, I managed to keep it cool and all these three difficult years, just felt like they crashed from my shoulders finally. I lost these chains after the grand prix.
“It was hard work to reach this moment and hopefully I can send the message out there that I’m ready now to fight for this kind of moment on a consistent basis – and there is no stronger message than a podium like this.”
The results can be timely, considering the struggles Pierre Gasly is going through as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner praised Kvyat’s fightback and maturity. It was bonanza for Toro Rosso, with Albon ending up sixth to register his best career result.
The Thai racer was as high as fourth and had a brief wheel-to-wheel battle against Hamilton as well, which he didn’t want to, since he had Sainz and Gasly on his tail. He eventually lost places to all the three drivers in the battle to drop out.
But with issues for both Hamilton and Gasly helped his cause for Albon to finish in the Top 6 in his first-ever F1 wet race. Albon said he was happy with the results but admitted that he didn’t want to fight Hamilton as it would have been detrimental to his race.
“To be honest, the one person I didn’t want to overtake was Hamilton,” said Albon. “Because I was not going to race him, he was like three seconds quicker than me and I was like ‘are you kidding me, Lewis?’ But he made mistake in the corner which brought me in.
“With these inters, they overheat quite quickly and we battle for two corners and it was dead and as I said, I didn’t want to battle Lewis but we kind of were pushed into it and as soon as I saw Carlos and Pierre behind me, I thought ‘here we go’.
“Before the battle, I was running P4-P5 and we were there on pure pace. Unfortunately, at the second stop we were caught out and pitted a lap later than Dany to switch
from wet tyres to dry, so four cars passed us.
“It’s funny, it’s like a disappointing P6 because we were running in P4 for quite a while. It was an amazing job by the team, the strategy was great and we were able to bounce back from a difficult qualifying.”
Here’s how the terrific German GP panned out
Alfa Romeo drivers out of points, Lewis Hamilton & Robert Kubica in
Charles Leclerc, Nico Hulkenberg not really happy with dragster tarmac
Guenther Steiner surprised with yet another tangle between Haas drivers