Debut Grand Prix In The Books 🤩

What a weekend! I’m super stoked to get my first Grand Prix as a Formula One driver in the books.

It was a solid weekend of building comfort as a driver in the car, which was a particular focus during FP1 and FP2. Getting the car into a working window that suits my style was the primary focus, and we accomplished that with the team.

We felt much more comfortable during Saturday’s FP3 session as a result of the previous day's work, and honestly, all the little things became much easier as I familiarised myself with being behind the wheel. 

Run one in qualifying was strong being a tenth away from Pierre, although my second run just didn't quite come together with difficult track position, especially with Hulkenberg passing me in pit lane which he was penalised for.

Ultimately I had 90 seconds to get to the line to start my second flying lap, as well as heavy traffic in sector 3 which hindered the beginning of the flying lap immensely. Big learning curve to end that session and something that we will keep in mind for the future.

Lining up for the Race, it was an amazing moment for myself, my family, and all those who have supported me to get to that point. Lap one was a bit crazy, avoided the chaos there, then settled in for the opening stint on the medium tyre which was decent.

I managed the tyre once we settled on the one-stop strategy, and boxed around lap 24 to get on the hard tyre, which set up for a long 35 laps home on that compound. For me, it was a bit of a shot in the dark when it came to degradation as I wasn’t sure how that tyre would react, and closing out the race I realised that there was a little more in it that I could have used.

The final laps of the stint were really good, I was matching pace with the other cars who were on the same strategy and felt that I was learning something new every single lap I was out there, and wrapped up my first Grand Prix with 15th place.

Unreal weekend and an immense feeling to get my F1 debut under my belt, we learned so much as a team and myself as a driver, which will make a massive difference once we get to Australia to start 2025.

Thank you so much to all my supporters who helped me get to this point, let's begin this next chapter 💪

Cheers,

JD