Race day
The race on Sunday was all about out-scoring Ferrari and while Max Verstappen raced away out in front, the battle behind him was fierce, with Charles Leclerc, George, the McLarens and Sergio Perez all in the mix.
We took some risks and needed to be aggressive, going for the undercuts and that helped us make up positions on the McLarens and put George into a position where he could fight for a podium.
Further back, Lewis made good progress but once again didn’t have a good feeling in the car, which made the fight back through the field even harder – not helped by some front wing damage he picked up early the race.
Perez came to the party late in the race and George couldn’t hold him back.
If George finished P4, we would have been tied on points – with Ferrari claiming P2 because of their win in Singapore.
But Perez had been handed a five-second time penalty for an earlier incident and so George put in some strong final laps to keep the Red Bull in sight.
When he crossed the line he moved back up to P3 to secure his second podium of the season and 10th as a Mercedes driver.
Further back, Lewis was in a battle of his own with Yuki Tsunoda and was briefly ahead after a last-lap move, before losing the rear of the car.
This fight was made harder by a brake issue that he’d been struggling with from the early stages, which prevented him from fighting much harder against the likes of Fernando Alonso and Tsunoda – especially in the final stint. Nevertheless, those points in P9 were very useful in our scrap for second.