Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

“It’s an incredible feeling to be back on the top spot after what feels like such a long time and such a struggle,” he said afterwards. “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.”

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.

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

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 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.

“This was a great race for the whole team and particularly for Lewis,” said Heikki. “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 1 soon.”

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.

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.

I said yesterday that I never give up and I think today's result shows that because I made up several positions and finished in the points again. The car felt strong early in the race and I think I had good pace but I was also stuck in traffic and that made things a little tricky. Later on I started to lose a bit of grip but I kept fighting because I knew we could get in the points. It's a pity we qualified outside the top 10 because who knows what could have been possible but I am happy to be in the points again and this is a positive result for the team. Now I am looking forward to the European Grand Prix in Valencia where I hope we will be even stronger.

After the first lap when I got past Jenson, I couldn’t hold the position and once he had got back past me, it dictated my race – it was a big moment for me and made it very difficult to improve for the rest of the day despite good car pace as I was running in traffic. We just need to keep pushing and one race soon we are going to get the result.

There was some good action out there but my race was really compromised from the start which is a shame as the potential was definitely there for a points finish. I had some contact from another car when I turned into the second corner which dropped me to the back of the field. It was always going to be difficult to make progress from there but there were flashes of pace, particularly during the last stint when I was able to close up to the cars ahead. It’s been a very difficult weekend and one to forget really. We know that we have a lot of hard work ahead of us to find out what is affecting our performance.

Von Startplatz 15 war Platz elf das Beste, was ich heute erreichen konnte. Auf den ersten Metern war mein Start gut, ich konnte mich sofort um ein paar Plätze verbessern. Aber später in der ersten Runde habe ich wieder an Boden verloren. Erst bekam ich einen Schlag von hinten, und später bin ich in Kurve elf außen in den Dreck geraten. Danach hat es eine Weile gedauert, ehe ich Sébastien Buemi überholen konnte, und dann steckte ich gleich wieder im Verkehr fest. Aus diesem Grund haben wir entschieden, meinen ersten Boxenstopp um mehrere Runden vorzuziehen. Das ist grundsätzlich natürlich ein Nachteil, aber angesichts der Verkehrssituation hat es sich dennoch gelohnt, und trotz des vergleichsweise hohen Kraftstoffgewichts war ich nicht schlecht unterwegs. Unterm Strich würde ich sagen, dass wir schneller geworden sind – entsprechend schade ist es, dass wir das nicht in Punkte ummünzen konnten.

I made a very good start and managed to overtake several cars, but then I was always stuck behind somebody, which didn’t help my race. I was also a bit unlucky with the strategy and I think my race would have worked out a lot better if I had been in some clean air. The car was good today and I’m glad that I benefited from the new updates this weekend.

Ich hatte einen wirklich guten Start und eine gute erste Runde. Dabei ist es mir gelungen, einige Positionen gutzumachen. Wenigstens das ist etwas Positives. Leider hatte ich massives Untersteuern, und meine Vorderreifen bauten sehr stark ab. Nach zehn Runden im jeweiligen Stint waren meine Reifen ziemlich hinüber und ich entsprechend langsam.

The race was quite tough for us. The grid position wasn't great and in the beginning we struggled a little bit with the grip. On the second and third stints though the car balance was actually pretty good and I was quicker than Barrichello and Kubica so I could push quite hard. Unfortunately here you just can't find a way past so we had to settle for 14th. Now we can really start to look forward to the next Grand Prix in Valencia.

I am very happy to have finished, but the last five laps were very difficult from the physical point of view. I found it hard to keep the car on the pace, but I am very satisfied. P15 is not so bad, but the main objective was to complete the 70 laps, with no mistakes, maintaining my pace. I have learned a lot but I have to say there are some aspects of F1 which made me think, ‘shit this is tough.

I am very disappointed with this race, as I made a lot of mistakes and I am not at all happy with my performance. I don’t think starting on the harder tyres was the right decision. I lost several places at the start and got stuck in traffic. Just a bad race. The car was good, as we showed in qualifying but today I was the one who made the mistakes. The only positive thing is that the car is definitely improved with this new package.

We had a problem with the water temperature so after one lap it had climbed to the maximum so the engine was running very hot. We had our first suspicions on the way to the grid and after a few corners it was clear that there was no way we could do the race. I had to retire to save the engine. It's been a difficult weekend overall but I'm looking forward to Valencia now where we have a big upgrade package coming through.

Budapest, 26th July 2009 - This morning Felipe Massa underwent a CT scan, which had a positive outcome. The driver was awake for some time and is now resting in the intensive care unit of Budapest's AEK Hospital.

Today we missed an opportunity to finish on the podium. I made a good start and the car was quick during my first stint, but then we had a problem at my first stop fitting the right front wheel to the car. When I left the pits there was a lot of vibration and it felt like I had a puncture, but then a few corners later the wheel flew off my car. I made it back to the pits to replace it, but then the problem I’d had with my fuel pump since lap two returned and started to get worse so we had to retire the car. It’s a shame that we missed this chance, but these things happen in racing and I’m trying to look on the bright side because we saw this weekend that the car is very competitive. I’m now looking ahead to the next race in Valencia, where I hope we can build on the promise we have shown.

I had a collision on the first corner with Kimi (Raikkonen). I was on the inside and had a clear run to accelerate, his car came sideways and we touched – he crashed into my car, it can happen. This was why my first pit stop was bad and, at some point, the front-left suspension gave up and we had to retire the car. We knew it would be close with the other teams here, but at the start of the race there’s nothing you can do other than putting your foot down. We have a button on our steering wheel, which is similar to the other teams, but nothing happens if you press it. You go into the first corner and you have five or six cars next to each other instead of three or four, so it’s a different situation. There are still a few races left this season and the race is still on, so we will see what we can do.