Lewis Hamilton (1st):
“It’s an incredible feeling to be back on the top spot after what feels like such a long time and such a struggle. This was one of my best races - I never gave up and, more importantly, neither did anyone in this team. I’m so proud of all the guys. We didn’t expect to win today - we didn’t think we quite had the overall pace - but the car was just perfect to drive, it felt fantastic for the entire race. We need to take as much as we can from this weekend. We’ll continue to push because that’s the only way this team knows. Now we want to be winners on a regular basis. Finally, my thoughts are with Felipe today. Despite our celebrations, it’s important to remember that there’s a guy lying in a hospital bed tonight, and I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say that we all had Felipe in our hearts and minds today and we wish him a speedy recovery.”
Kimi Raikkonen (2nd):
“Today’s result is very important for the team in such a difficult weekend because of what happened to Felipe yesterday. I am pleased with second place, even if it is not completely satisfying as I always race to win. On this type of track, we are certainly closer to the best than at other circuits and today, honestly we were actually even closer than we had expected to be. I got a good start, ending up fourth after the first few corners. We knew it would be crucial to make up places at the start to be in with a chance of fighting for the podium. After the first pit stop we began to have problems with the right hand exhaust and so, at the second stop, the team asked to leave using a different procedure to usual. It lost me a bit of time but I still had a reasonable advantage over Webber so I could manage the situation. Today, the car wasn’t bad, but it was not quick enough to go for the win.”
Mark Webber (3rd):
“I expected us to be a little bit quicker after our running on Friday, but to be honest we expected these guys (McLaren and Ferrari) to be around us. We knew it would be a more difficult venue for us and that we wouldn’t have the advantage that we maybe had at the last two events so, all-in-all, I’m happy to get the result we did today. I think we would have had a better chance to fight with Kimi (Raikkonen) if we’d made a slightly different pit stop and chose a different tyre for the middle stint, but that was my call. I was worried about how long the middle stint was, so it was quite difficult to know which tyre to put on. Overall we still have a lot of positives to take away from here - we’re still up there, we’re in the hunt and know that we can take our car to a lot of venues and be competitive. Red Bull and Renault have a lot to be proud of, we’re still a strong force and it’s a positive day.”
Nico Rosberg, Williams (4th):
“I am quite pleased with the outcome today as it was quite tricky, especially at the start against the KERS cars. Initially I had no chance off the line, but the first corner was quite a big mess and I managed to profit from this and climb back to fifth place, which was important. As the race settled down, I had to manage the tyres cautiously because of graining in both the first and second stint. Given all of these issues, we have to be very happy with fourth place and I am now up to fifth in the championship, although of course this was in part due to the fact that Felipe (Massa) wasn’t able to start today. Anyway, I am enjoying working with the team and everyone is pushing on really well, so we’ll continue to improve if we keep moving in this direction.”
Heikki Kovalainen (5th):
“This was a great race for the whole team and particularly for Lewis. Hopefully next time it will be me! This victory proves just how much the team has improved the performance of our car during the past few months: this is the result of the hard work of every single man and woman in our team - and this victory must be especially sweet for all of them. Our thoughts are also with Felipe - I want to wish him all the best and hope he’ll be back in Formula One soon.”
Timo Glock (6th):
“I thoroughly enjoyed my race and to finish inside the top six after starting from 13th is a very good result. I have to say thanks to the team for their good work this weekend, especially to my car crew who have done such a great job. Our strategy was really strong today and the car felt spot on, so it was a nice race for me. In the first stint, on such a heavy fuel load, I struggled a little to start with but then I found a good rhythm and made up a lot of time, especially in the second stint. I had a really good feeling for the car and the tyres performed very well; really consistent. This result is better than I expected today so I am happy and it’s nice to be back in the points again.”
Jenson Button (7th):
“We felt positive that we could get a good result today but unfortunately it turned into damage limitation for our championship challenge. I was heavily fuelled after qualifying and our plan was to get a good start, stay with the cars in front and then I was going longer at the first stop. My rear tyres grained massively in the first few laps which took away any chance that I had of keeping pace with the front-runners. We don’t know what the problem is right now as our pace on the option tyre on Friday was pretty good and we were able to manage the rear end much better than some of the others. The car just doesn’t feel like it did a few races ago but we’ll work hard to identify the problems before Valencia. It’s disappointing as we had high hopes for this race but we were fortunate to come away with two points.”
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