The Maserati MSG team had a major post-mortem in to a poor first race of the season at Sao Paulo earlier this month after what its new team principal Cyril Blais described as a “very frustrating” event.
Stoffel Vandoorne inherited a point in 10th place after Norman Nato’s post-race penalty but this did little to heal the pain of a race that saw a costly accident for Jake Hughes and Stoffel Vandoorne never really feature in the race.
Vandoorne very briefly ran third after taking his first attack mode hit (two minutes) but was unable to make progress thereafter and slipped to the fringes of the top ten, not helped by losing the final two minutes of his attack mode tranche to the second red flag of the race.
“I think you could have scored a lot of points in that race,” rued Blais.
“I think it was a bit of a missed opportunity and it all started when we didn’t qualify where we should have. I think, being totally honest, I don’t think we did the best job we could’ve done in qualifying.
“The gap to the top is still a bit too far. We did make progress during the off season, but not enough to close that gap the way we would like, so it is very frustrating.”
Hughes was eliminated in a second lap accident that saw him take avoiding action when Sebastien Buemi tagged the back of a NEOM McLaren exiting the chicane. This spooked Hughes who got on to the dirty part of the track and snapped in to the wall where he was collected by a following Nico Mueller.
Blais seemed to believe that the incident should have been looked at further.
“Jake’s race ended up very early on one comment on the incident,” he said. “We asked Race Control to have a look. But anyway………
“The race was done for Jake very early, which is a shame for two things. Obviously, we got the car damaged, which is good way to start the season with the cost that’s involved and also the fact that Jake couldn’t get any mileage.
“He’s new to the team, new to the car, the tyres, so it would have been good for him to get that experience and that mileage with our car and the systems. So, Massively frustrating.
“We still take some positive from the weekend. I think that some of the race strategy, the execution was good, and we identified some of the potential issues during the race.”
Maserati MSG now head to Mexico City where it was strong last year after Maximilian Guenther scored a strong fourth place after fighting back from a qualifying incident to claim third on the grid.
