MotorLat had access to an online meeting with Guenther Steiner where the team principal shared his opinion on his drivers’ performance at the demanding Saudi Arabian track.

The Saudi Arabian track is a demanding one for all drivers, when MotorLat asked him about how happy he was with his rookie drivers performance over the weekend. Steiner seemed to be quite happy “pretty happy thinking that it´s new for everybody but Nikita didn´t go to the simulator, they kept their noses clean so for us it was pretty good and Mick did a very good qualifying if you compare the distance to the cars in front. Nikita wasn´t so lucky on his last attempt a car in front of him didn´t stop but lifted so he couldn´t do his last attempt but otherwise I´m very happy”

On the drivers closing the gap to their most immediate competitors although the car wasn´t developed over the course of the season he said “I am very happy I think we´re ready for getting a new car and hopefully we´ll be in the battle for points again next year”.

On whether Mick could have been faster than the Aston Martins in Q1 he said “they must have had some issues. it would have been nice but already for us being close to the Aston Martins and the Williams on a long track like this we know what the time gap was at the beginning of the season what it is now as much as the result if you look at where we start it is the same position as some weekend before but it seems we made progress with the drivers and the team not only with the drivers. I can see the team is ready for next year. “

On Hamilton´s getting away with a fine he said “I don´t think we would have got away with a fine Mercedes got. We would have got five positions in the grid. In the position we are at the moment our voice is not pretty heard. We need to get up and we will get vocal about it and not to just get it to our chin” Guenther understands these decisions are not easy to take for the stewards “it´s a very difficult job to do. Sometimes the situations are different.”

“I´m not upset about what happened because you cannot be worse than last. When you are in a position to fight for something for sure it is different and hopefully it will be different next year.”