Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

Ich bin überglücklich, hier in Baku gewonnen zu haben. Ich fühlte mich wie ein Teil des Autos, mehr als jemals zuvor. Ich hatte zu keinem Zeitpunkt das Gefühl, dass etwas schiefgehen könnte. Das Auto war an diesem Wochenende unglaublich. Vielen Dank an mein Team dafür. Schon im Qualifying gestern Nachmittag habe ich dieses perfekte Gefühl gespürt. Im Rennen erwarteten wir eine Safety Car-Phase. Ich hoffte jedoch, dass es nicht soweit kommen würde, da dies oft zu Chaos führt. Aber der Nachmittag verlief für mich an der Spitze recht geradlinig. Es gab nur einmal kleinere Bedenken, als ich gegen Rennmitte das Gefühl hatte, dass mir etwas Power fehlen würde. Die Ingenieure durften mir nicht sagen, was ich dagegen tun konnte. Also sah ich mir mein Lenkrad an und versuchte, es selbst zu lösen. Das hat gut funktioniert. Sagol! Das bedeutet „vielen Dank“ an Baku für dieses super Wochenende! Jetzt freue ich mich auf Österreich!

”We can be very proud of what we achieved today, both cars got points. We were very bad off and slow on Friday and initially we didn’t know why. We changed a lot in the car, made big steps forward, and we finished second today. I think the way things went on the track was fantastic, but we can’t be entirely happy. We lost a position with Kimi but he played nice team work, he was very kind to hand me the place. In the end it was a bit of a shame that we didn’t manage to finish second and third, but I think he was struggling quite a bit with his tires. It was not a fresh set. I had a good feeling with the tires, so I kept the first set a bit longer, even if after a couple of laps I wasn’t so confident. But later the tires did recover and from that point it was good again. The season is long and I think there’s a lot of stuff happening here, but especially back in Maranello. Our President is pushing very hard, but in a good way. He is willing to understand, help us and to push us, as well. Ambition is high but, moving forward step by step, I am sure we will do the right things for this year and for the future to make sure we give the others a very hard time. We didn’t have a wonderful start of the season, even though the car has been good, but I think most of the times we didn’t fully use our opportunities. However, today we did a great job. We will keep doing the optimum and keep enhancing our chances to be there at the end of the year, but surely we know we have to pick up our game and improve the car.”

“I knew that the podium was possible today, but we really had to work hard for it. The key to my race was the great start I made to get around a Williams [Massa] and a Toro Rosso [Kvyat]. Then, in the first stint I was suffering with graining of my supsersoft tyres and we had to decide whether to wait for it to improve or to make an early stop. In the end, we stayed out longer, which was the right decision, but when I came out of the pits I struggled to warm-up the soft tyres and I was under big pressure from Lewis [Hamilton] behind. I pushed as hard as I could and opened up a gap, and then I focussed on looking after my tyres. I closed in on Kimi [Raikkonen] and I knew he had a penalty, but on the final lap I got very close to him and saw the opportunity to overtake him, so I took it. To be on the podium for a second time this year feels fantastic. The team has done a brilliant job and we are having an amazing year.”

”Overall I’m a bit disappointed of how difficult this weekend was, far from being fun all the time, but in the race the car was good and the speed was there. At one point I ran over the white line and got a 5 seconds penalty. From that moment I tried to keep the gap to Perez to maintain my position, but on a couple of occasions I ended up following two lapped cars and lost precious time. I’m fine with the fact of swapping position with Sebastian, because anyway I had the penalty, but in the moment I let him pass I lost 2.5 seconds in that lap and this did not help.In the end I could have for sure stayed in front of Perez but there was no reason to fight and maybe take some risks. Obviously my race could have been a different story today, but considering all that happened, the end the result is not too bad.”

Ich habe keine Ahnung, was da heute passiert ist. Ich hatte einfach keine Power. Ich befand mich lange Zeit in einem Motor-Modus, in dem es sich anfühlte, als ob ich ohne ERS fahren würde. Es gibt hunderte verschiedener Kombinationen wie man die Schalter am Lenkrad einstellen kann. Aber egal, wie viel man lernt, man kann niemals alle davon kennen. Ich fuhr herum und sah auf mein Display, um herauszufinden, was falsch lief. Aber ich konnte nichts erkennen, was ich anders als sonst gemacht hätte. Die Technik ist aktuell so kompliziert und ich verstehe nicht, warum man uns davon abhält, solche Dinge auf der Strecke zu lösen. Es war sehr schade, dass ich nicht richtig Rennen fahren konnte. Wenn ich das Problem hätte lösen können, hätte ich Teil der Show sein und gegen die Jungs vor mir kämpfen können. Rund zehn Runden vor Schluss löste sich das Problem von selbst. Aber zu diesem Zeitpunkt hatte ich nichts mehr zu gewinnen oder zu verlieren. Ich lag mehr als zehn Sekunden hinter dem Auto vor mir und hatte den gleichen Vorsprung auf meinen Hintermann. Am Ende drehte ich den Motor sogar herunter, um ihn zu schonen. Schließlich habe ich nicht mehr so viele für den Rest der Saison übrig. Heute hat es einfach nicht sollen sein. Das Ergebnis steht. Ich habe Punkte für Platz fünf mitgenommen und werde nun versuchen, beim nächsten Rennen zurückzuschlagen.

Overall, it was a good day for us because the pace we had today wasn’t enough for any more. It felt like a good race from my side, and we managed to do the one-stop strategy which was definitely the best one today. I’m glad we could manage the tyres and get it to work because that made the sixth place possible. The team did a really good job with what we had today, the strategy and the pitstop. Now we need to work hard because we need better positions than this. We need to make the car quicker and then we can fight for another podium soon.

"At the start we put ourselves in a good position and the aim was to get Nico. We managed to hold second and I felt pretty good in the first few laps, especially as I could see Seb wasn't catching me. After lap three we started to slide the rear and there was no way of controlling it. I went from being very optimistic about our race to being uncertain. I don't think we had the wrong strategy, one stop would have been ideal but we had to adapt and were forced into a two stop race. We were slow in the first two stints but in the third one we managed to find some pace and I passed Hulkenburg, which was good fun. I think Max suffered the same issues so that's just the way it went, I don't think we could have done anything else today. We need to understand why because we usually perform well in hot races, like Singapore. Today was a bit unexpected. I got everyone's hopes up yesterday by saying it could be the race of the season, It was, however, pretty uneventful."

"It was a tricky start, but a good end. On the supersoft and the soft tyres we had too much degradation in the rear and from there on, once we changed to the medium tyres, I felt like I was flying in the end. My lap times were coming down very nicely – I managed to drive back to eighth and almost seventh. With the start position I had it was going to be difficult to catch the front guys, but I think in the end we did a good job. Of course you want to finish higher up but that was not possible today. I had the third-fastest lap today in the race so I can't complain."

“It was a fairly tough race for me. The start was ok, but coming into turn one someone [Gutierrez] hit me from behind. I lost a couple of positions trying to control the car and that put me a bit on the back foot. Getting through traffic in the opening stages was not very easy and it cost me a lot of time. Then, for the early part of the race, I was struggling with oversteer and in general I couldn’t find the same harmony with the car that I had in practice. Making the supersoft tyres last as long as I did - 31 laps - was not easy and by the end of the race I had very little left, but it was a risk I was happy to take to make our strategy work. The car had great potential all weekend long, but I feel I paid for the mistake I made yesterday in qualifying. However, I am pleased for the team’s result: it means we bring home a bunch of points which is a boost for our season.”

It was a really terrible race for me, one to forget. I struggled massively with the tyres. I couldn’t make them work, I was having a lot more degradation on the rears than I thought I would. One point is more than it could have been because I couldn’t drive the car in the proper way and I couldn’t save the tyres either. We maybe need to change something in the car to make the tyres work in a different way here in the future.

“Obviously, I didn’t make it easy for myself starting 19th. I enjoyed the race, and I got everything out of the car, but that was all we could really do as we didn’t have the pace this weekend. “I’m happy with my performance today. In terms of strategy, it was difficult to know the best way to go, but we’d struggled with graining on the Supersoft, so chose to pit relatively early. Then our pace was good on the Prime – I’m happy with that. It was also good to battle out there, especially when the other guy has the same equipment as you. “In terms of outright performance, we’re not quite quick enough, so to come from 19th to 11th wasn’t too bad, particularly with the straight-line speed we had here. “It was a fun race and I enjoyed it, but there are some improvements needed to raise our level of performance. I persevered as I always do when times are tough, and we’ll hopefully come out the other side.”

“Overall, I am satisfied with my performance today. I fought very hard from the beginning to the end, so we can be pleased with P12. We maximised our performance on track as well as on the strategy-side. I was close to the points today, but just not close enough. I am satisfied, but we are still not there with what we want to achieve. We want to score points, and we are all highly motivated to get there.”

“The car felt very good at the beginning of the race and everything was going well. We then had a bit of rear (tire) graining and we had to pit to go on to the soft tires. The plan was to go to the end. We then had too much rubbish at the front of the radiators and we had to stop again to clean them. That extra stop cost us a lot of performance. We had to fit the medium tires to go to the end, as we didn’t have any more softs. We did our best, but we’re still not where we want to be.”

“I think this was a good race in terms of what we got out of it. We qualified second to last, started from the pit lane and finished fourteenth; that’s not too bad. We learnt about the car in some extreme areas of the set-up, which is good. The main thing to take away from this weekend is how the team kept their cool and stayed positive. They are winners; they have been world champions many times, so for them to qualify on the last row is very tough. And yet, you can see, their reaction has been strong.”

“We showed once again that our race pace is a lot better than our qualifying pace, which I am thankful for. I had a big flat spot on the soft tyres which meant I had to change; up until then the pace was quite strong. The supersofts did well as well but it was tough to make up the time it takes to pit. That and making a mistake at the start pretty much decided my race. It’s a fun track to drive, it’s just a shame that we didn’t have the car for it today.”

“It wasn’t a good day for us. I had some damage to the car at the start, and then after that, I was just trying to recover as much as I could. We didn’t have the pace to attack the front. I was struggling to overtake and to regain positions. Overall, it wasn’t a great day. Now we need to keep our focus for the next race and keep optimistic. We’re not where we want to be, but we’ll keep pushing and try to optimize everything to get the most from the car for Austria.”

“It was a disappointing race for me. Straight from the start the tyre behaviour was different from what we expected. We calculated that they would last more laps than they actually did. On the first stint my soft tyres were dropping off a lot, so we had to switch our planned one stop strategy to a two stopper. Overall, I could not get the tyres to work properly, so my pace was not good enough. The only time I got a better feeling and the tyres to work was towards the end of the race, because of the lower temperatures.

“Not such a good one for me today. I had contact in Turn 1, which damaged my front wing and I had to stop at the end of the first lap. Obviously a new one requires a longer pit stop, so I dropped back quite a bit when I re-joined the race. We decided to put the Soft tyre on at that point and stay on a one-stop strategy, but 49 laps was a long stint for that tyre and I was really struggling with high degradation; the braking point was changing every lap. But, I think everyone was expecting some opportunities today, so we had to try to put ourselves in a position to respond to them. In the end, no such opportunities; it was a very straightforward race. I’m going to focus on the positives though; I had a really strong qualifying and I finished the race, so that’s good.”

“It’s been a bit of a difficult weekend overall, and even though we were doing a good recovery in today’s race, unfortunately a suspension issue ended my race. It’s a shame, because I had positive feelings in the car and our strategy and pace was looking decent… But I know it will get better soon! As a driver, when this sort of thing happens, all you can do is forget about it quickly and work hard for the next race. We have to remember that we’ve had very good momentum from Barcelona up until now, so this little hiccup won’t disturb me: it was just an unproductive weekend. There wasn’t much more I could’ve done from my side today and I’m still happy with my season so far. I look forward to the next race in Austria.”

“Quite a disappointing day, as I was only able to race for a few laps before retiring because of an issue with the rear suspension. The car became difficult to handle at the beginning of the race and even though we had quite a decent first lap, in the end we had to stop – it’s a real pity, but that’s life, this is part of racing. We need to investigate what happened and understand the issue, but we will definitely keep on pushing and fighting. We remain positive as the handling of the car has been very good this whole weekend, so the future looks promising and hopefully those enjoyable races will come soon. I will cancel today out of my mind and all we need to do is carry on working like we have done until yesterday, because everything was looking great before the race.”

"This was always going to be a difficult race for us – and that’s made even more difficult when you don’t see the chequered flag. “We had a developing issue on the gearbox which was getting worse and worse, so we decided to retire the car in order to prevent damage to the power unit or anything else. It’s a shame, but we were running outside the points, so this retirement feels a little less painful. “The most important thing now is for the team to find a little more pace – for both qualifying and the race."

“Today is a bit of shame to be honest; we were hoping for much more. I think we were on quite a different strategy than the other guys; one that could really make the most of any chances, but only if the race came our way. We started on the Softs and I was happy with my position after the first lap but it was more difficult on the Soft than the Supersoft. Then we pitted and again I was really happy with my pace on the Medium tyre; I felt I could have closed the gap to the Saubers in front of me but I was running out of brakes. When I got to Turn 1 I simply had no brakes and there was no alternative but to stop. So nothing more to say, we just have to look ahead. I’ve really enjoyed this circuit and my first experience of Baku though.