New set-up by de Vries: 'It worked out well for us'

Nyck de Vries has had a difficult season so far. The Dutchman currently has 0 points. He is the only one along with Logan Sargeant at the bottom of the list. Last weekend, he started at the back at the Austrian GP, but managed to make up places.

De Vries qualified last on Friday but changed his car set-up: "We had applied overnight changes to the car to get a better performance out of the car." As a result, the Dutchman had to start from the pits. Despite this, he finished the race fifteenth.

According to de Vries, the change in set-up certainly benefited the result. "I think it was a solid race today. We made some overnight changes to the car to find more performance, which meant we started the race from the pitlane. It certainly played out well for us as the early Virtual Safety Car closed the gap between all the cars. In terms of execution, I think we did a good job and extracted the maximum out of our package, we just lacked pace to fight further towards the top ten," he said.

De Vries: " I still have a lot to improve on, and I’m certainly not yet at the level I want to be, but collectively, we are trying to consistently improve."

During the GP, it was sometimes push and pull on the track. There were many battles, and de Vries was one of them. During the race, he was again in a battle with Kevin Magnussen. However, this did not go as hoped, as de Vries received a five-second penalty after forcing Magnussen off the track.

"I’ll take the penalty that the stewards gave me, we are just trying to find the limit, but thankfully we made a sufficient gap to not lose any positions," said the Dutchman. Besides the time penalty, he has also received two penalty points on his super licence. These are the first two penalty points of his F1 career.