Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley expressed frustration at slipping down the order at the Hungarian Grand Prix, believing his race strategy backfired.
Hartley started from eighth on the grid after securing his first Q3 appearance in Saturday’s rain-affected qualifying session and made a strong start, but ultimately lost the spot he had gained on Renault’s Carlos Sainz Jr., and also fell behind Haas’ Kevin Magnussen.
Sainz Jr. ran on the Soft compound as opposed to the Ultrasofts employed by Hartley, and the New Zealander stopped for Mediums on lap 24 of 70.
Renault responded by pitting Sainz Jr. next time around, while Haas’ Romain Grosjean extended his stint to jump ahead, as Fernando Alonso leapfrogged all three by not stopping until lap 39.
With Hartley having also been overhauled by the recovering Daniel Ricciardo he was left down in a point-less 11th, as he came home within sight of both Sainz Jr. and Grosjean.
“I’m disappointed with 11th, I had a really good start actually, had my nose up the inside of Pierre [Gasly] into Turn 1, he braked pretty early and it worked out well for him,” he said.
“But I lost a place to Magnussen, almost got past Carlos at Turn 2, not quite though, on the first stint he was on the hard compound tyre, I was on the Ultrasofts.
“I had a lot more pace but nowhere to overtake, then we pitted very early for Mediums, and it didn’t work out for us, the ones that stayed out on Softs over-cut us.
“We lost a place to Grosjean, the McLarens, not sure who else, but yeah obviously as a team sometimes you have to split strategy but it didn’t work out for me.”
Hartley added that he was also compromised by his pit stop dropping him into the territory for being lapped.
“I still had plenty of tyres when we boxed but then going onto the harder compound tyre, which was a lot slower early on, people that stayed out on softer [tyres] were quicker,” he said.
“And I got the blue flags, so a double negative.
“I haven’t seen all the details on how it played out but we lost a lot of places through that strategy, obviously disappointed, I didn’t actually get overtaken once on track but it was all lost on the strategy.”
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