Having really struggled at the Sakhir Grand Prix, there was a real sense of relief when the MCL35 was fast right out of the box on Friday afternoon for FP1. The benefits of a smooth weekend are underrated outside the F1 paddock but much prized within. Through the three practice sessions, the team was able to concentrate on unlocking the last few tenths of performance rather than having to firefight underlying issues. Leaving aside the tension of the Championship position, this was probably the smoothest weekend the team has had all year.

It hasn’t happened often this year, but Lando and Carlos opted to pursue different race strategies on Sunday in the choices they made ahead of FP3. While Carlos decided to use two sets of Soft tyres in the final practice session, Lando opted for a Soft and a Medium. The knock-on effect was that Carlos was going to attempt to get out of Q2 with a Medium tyre, while Lando would go for the more conventional Soft. That was a tough ask for Carlos but the reward would be starting the race on the better tyre. It was tense in the final minutes of Q2: Carlos set his Medium time but was out on a Soft set in case he needed to improve. He got the call in time to abort the lap, with the team satisfied he couldn't be pushed out of the top 10. He keyed-up with a ‘whooo-hoooo’ as he took the pit entry, putting a smile on everyone’s face in the garage. 

In recent weeks our qualifying form has been… patchy. Things have gone wrong or, more often, failed to go right. Given how very difficult overtaking is at the Yas Marina Circuit, and what was at stake this weekend, there was a lot of nervous energy in the garage. In the moment it is perhaps easy to forget that other teams are nervous too. In the final analysis, we produced one of our absolute best qualifying performances of the year. Carlos did a stellar job to get through to Q3 on those Medium tyres, while Lando put in an absolutely rocket final lap to qualify P4. There were yells and fist bumps after each of those, more from relief than the starting positions.

The last race of the season always brings with it a few departures. This year in our garage it was Carlos and our crew of Renault engineers, most of whom have worked exclusively on our cars for the last three seasons. The reality is you’re saying goodbye to people moving a couple of doors down the pitlane, who you’ll see again in a few weeks – but it always feels like more of a wrench than that. The whole team assembled in the garage a couple of hours before the race to applaud our soon-to-be-former colleagues and to hand out mementos (Carlos got a sidepod cover – where he’s going to put it is a mystery, you’d need a pretty big fireplace to hang it above the mantlepiece) – but grabbing P3 in the Constructors’ Championship was a really nice way to sign-off for everybody, and the team split up with a genuine sense of achievement.

Paul James, our team manager, has seen it all before. He’s been on the race team since the late 1990s: mechanic, number one mechanic and chief mechanic before now. He isn’t particularly demonstrative on the pit wall: there will be a quiet ‘well done’ after a good stop, or praise for bringing both cars home in a difficult race. He doesn’t raise his voice. It was a little different on Sunday after what turned out to be our final pit-stops of the year, the critical, high-stakes double shuffle behind the Virtual Safety Car. “Excellent stops guys! Excellent!” he bellowed over the radio, banging on the desk.

The flashpoint in the race was supposed to be the pit-stops, and whether the Medium starters could use their tyre advantage to go long and pass the cars that had to stop early and get rid of the Soft tyre. The Virtual Safety Car on lap 10 came at precisely the wrong time and robbed the race of that element of drama because the top nine cars, irrespective of starting tyre, all came into the pits together, and set off on a long stint with the Hard tyre to the flag. With the die definitively cast and all of the strategic decisions made before one-fifth race distance, comms between pit wall and driver were sparse, restricted to the occasional reassurance that yes, the tyres were fine, and no, the driver wasn’t being caught, or pushing too hard, or not pushing hard enough. It was one of the quietest races on the radio we’ve ever had. At one point, Will Joseph, Lando’s race engineer, got on the radio “just to let you know we’re still here.”

The message from senior management over the last month has been that the measure of success would not be where the team finishes in the Constructors’ Championship but how much closer we are to the long-term goal of racing at the front in F1 once again. Nobody disagrees with the philosophy – but taking third place on the last day of the season was still a huge moment and celebrated accordingly. If a car finishes on the podium then a tray of champagne might appear – for fifth and sixth, the crew in the garage made do with a nice, cold beer, and then started pack-down for the long journey home.