'Daniel 'super frustrated' after mega start goes sideways in Styria’

Daniel made a brilliant start to Sunday's Styrian Grand Prix to immediately jump into a points-paying position, but a power pause put paid to those grand plans … 

It was only six corners of pain, but it was a glitch that came with big consequences for Daniel at the Styrian Grand Prix, where a 13th-place start ended with a finish in the same position after 71 laps of the Red Bull Ring on Sunday afternoon.

Daniel was disappointed to be stuck on the seventh row after qualifying, but his hopes of a strong points haul were immediately ignited when he threaded his McLaren through the usual first-lap melee in Austria, pushing past four rivals to be ninth after just one lap.

"I got (Ferrari's Carlos) Sainz off the line and then (AlphaTauri's Pierre) Gasly had a puncture when (Ferrari's) Charles (Leclerc) drove into him," Daniel explains.

"Then I got (AlphaTauri's Yuki) Tsunoda on the outside of Turn 9 – that was actually a sick move! – so that was four spots on lap one. Enjoyed that!"

With George Russell in a slower Williams ahead of him in the early stages, Daniel had his eye on at least a top-six finish, but lap 7 proved to be his undoing through no fault of his own. As he exited Turn 3, he had a sudden loss of power, and as he crawled through the rest of the lap while the team radioed information he could use to fix the problem, all those first-lap gains simply evaporated.

"The team gave me some switch changes and I was able to switch it back around Turn 9, so it was half a lap and I obviously lost all of the positions I'd gained, and that was that," he says.

"I kind of knew a good race result was more or less over after that. From there I was in a DRS train, and I couldn’t do anything. That was really unfortunate and took the wind out of my sails for the rest of the race. I had (Alfa Romeo's Kimi) Raikkonen in front of me and he was on a hard tyre, so that was tough because naturally his tyre is getting better while my medium tyre was getting worse in the traffic."

Daniel made his one tyre stop on lap 41, discarding his mediums for hards to run to the finish, and eventually settled in 13th position after passing the Alpine of Esteban Ocon and the Alfa Romeo of Antonio Giovinazzi. He finished eight seconds behind Tsunoda in the final points-paying position of 10th; lap seven of the race, as he frantically rebooted his ailing car, cost him five seconds in all on the shortest lap of the season time-wise, a critical loss at the most inopportune moment.

Fortunately for Daniel, redemption in Austria could come as soon as this weekend with the second race in seven days at the Red Bull Ring coming with round nine of the season, the Austrian Grand Prix. It's the third leg of a triple-header, but Daniel is thankful to have a chance to get a second crack at the same circuit – and hopefully with fewer gremlins to battle.

"I was in a DRS train for a lot of the race, but I definitely think there were things we learned from that for next weekend with set-up, so some things will help us out for this week coming," he says.

"I definitely felt sixth was on the cards last Sunday. I was ahead of Sainz and I know he showed good pace later on in clear air (and finished sixth), but if I was to have cleared Russell I would have had good pace in clear air as well. Sixth was the best possible result, and maybe eighth would have been the worst. So that's why it was super frustrating.

"Two weeks in a row at the same track isn't always exciting, but I'm always happy to go back and put into place what we'd learned at the same layout for a second time. We'll get another crack at it – so I'm not mad about that at all!"