Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

"A great result thanks to all the team! At the start, it was important for me to get second place, and I managed. Also, we got everything right with the strategy. We decided to pit early and this tactics proved to be working. Towards, the end, I tried to manage the gap I had over Lewis. I expected him to charge through, of course I was concerned, with all the traffic ahead of me. But it the end it was all OK. The car was like a dream to drive today. I felt right from the beginning that we had the speed to win today. I had a good feeling yesterday already, and it was just confirmed today. The lap back to pits was so sweet, with all the fireworks around, and I really savored it. Tonight we enjoy the moment, but tomorrow we'll be back at work. I haven't changed my mind: to become world champion, you must first beat the Mercedes We'll take it race after race."

Das war ein forderndes Wochenende. Mein Start war okay, aber Sebastian war in meinem toten Winkel. Deshalb wusste ich nicht, wo er sich befand und verlor eine Position an ihn. Es war richtig hart, ihm zu folgen. Aber insgesamt hatten wir eine ähnliche Pace. Während der Safety Car-Phase schätzte ich die Situation falsch ein. Es war mein Fehler, dafür möchte ich mich beim Team entschuldigen. Ich hatte eine gute Pace im zweiten und im letzten Stint und wir dachten wirklich, dass wir Sebastian noch einholen könnten. Aber die 5-Sekunden-Strafe machte es doppelt so schwer. Ich glaube, dass es die richtige Entscheidung war, im letzten Stint auf die Soft-Reifen zu setzen. Ich denke, das war die beste Entscheidung, da es noch ein langer Weg war. Unsere Jungs haben in diesem Jahr bislang gute Entscheidungen getroffen. Ich habe mein Bestes versucht, um mich von dem Fehler zu erholen, aber es hat nicht gereicht. Dennoch nehmen wir wichtige Punkte mit.

Das war kein guter Tag. Wir hatten Schwierigkeiten mit den Reifendrücken am Start. Ich weiß nicht, was es war, aber ich konnte es im ersten Stint regelrecht spüren. Ich rutschte ab der zweiten Runde herum. Die Pace war nicht gut und Sebastian setzte uns richtig unter Druck. Ich versuchte, meinen ersten Stint auszudehnen, aber ich konnte mit der Pace nicht mithalten. Der zweite Stint war besser. Aber ich kämpfte noch immer mit Untersteuern. Im letzten Stint bekam ich das Heck dann nicht ans Arbeiten. In der Safety Car-Phase gab es beim ersten Stopp ein Problem und wir verloren etwas Zeit. Sonst wäre ich vielleicht vorne gewesen. Aber ich weiß, dass das Team die Sache untersuchen wird. Nach dem Re-Start hatte ich einen guten Kampf gegen Sebastian, aber leider war es nur für einen kurzen Moment. Ich habe bislang nicht die Rennergebnisse eingefahren, die ich mir erhofft hatte. Deshalb peile ich jetzt ein starkes Wochenende in Sotschi an.

"In a way, a lot of good things happened this weekend, but the end result is still disappointing. The car was working pretty nicely and to be honest I expected that. Today I had a bad start and because of that, the first two corners were really bad; obviously after that I was catching up, I got past Massa reasonably quickly. Then I did my pit stop, but I was unlucky with the Safety Car. The overall feeling was good, I was fast but obviously the time lost at the start did not help: we put ourselves in a difficult position. I feel that we are absolutely doing the right things, and in the big picture we are pretty much where we want to be, but we still need to fine-tune a few things; it's all about putting the lap together. We need to start more at the front and then our races will be a lot easier. I am happy for Seb and for all the team."

“For me it was a race of two halves really. At the beginning of the race I genuinely thought we had a chance to win. That stint was looking very competitive and I could see Valtteri was struggling. I was at the tail end of the front pack and I could see everyone else in front of me. They were sliding and looked like they were struggling more. It was quite easy for me to stay there and I was looking after my tyres, so at that point I was thinking it could be on today, not only for a podium but for a win. The safety car worked for me in that we jumped up to third but it wasn’t so good for our tyres and that’s where we lost a lot of ground. Even once we settled into a pace and the chaos settled we fell back and I was struggling with grip at the front and rear. We never really got that tyre working for us today.”

I would say it was a great day and I managed to have a great race with a perfect start. What a great first lap - I passed Hulkenberg and I managed to pass Kimi at corner four. I kept the tyres working in the right way and then I passed Daniel after the safety car which was great. After a while, they managed to get better pace out of their tyres and jump ahead of us with the car they have. But to be honest, the positon I finished today was like a victory and it’s important for the whole team. Today is Frank’s birthday, and although he deserves a victory, it is like one. I am sure he is happy and very proud of his team.

“I’m very proud of my team today. To finish seventh after starting from P18 is an amazing recovery and we can be very happy tonight. It’s also our thirteenth consecutive race in the points, which is an incredible achievement. The first lap was very important for my race because I made up five places and was up in P13 by the end of lap one. I had great tyre life in the first stint; we stayed out as long as we could and the safety car played into our hands just when I needed to make a pit stop. So I think we made the most of every opportunity and the whole team – the engineers and the mechanics – played their part in executing a perfect race. We showed, once again, that we never give up on Sundays and we can come back strong after a difficult qualifying. We know there are still areas where we can improve and that there is more speed to come from this car, but for now it feels good to have both cars in the points for the third race this season.”

“It was a pretty good race. I made a decent start and my first stint was pretty good, but it was tough to stay behind the Renault. Then we had the bad luck with the safety car, as we’d pitted just before. I saw (Sergio) Perez come out and I thought, ‘How did he come out in front of me when he’d been 10 seconds behind?’ He gained 12 seconds with the safety car and that cost a position. At the restart I struggled a little bit with the top speed. But, eventually, we made the right strategy call and pushed on the good laps with some great overtaking maneuvers. So, here we are, P8. It’s good to be here scoring points.”

“It’s good to have the first points of the season on the board and I think I had a good race given the pace of the car; I really wrestled with it a lot and two points were the best we could do on the strategy we ran. We are a lot better in qualifying, but over the 57 laps of the race we exposed some of the areas where we need to improve. Fortunately, I am testing here on Tuesday, so we have a great opportunity to make progress. We have some updates for evaluation when I’m in the car, which will hopefully improve our race pace by a big chunk for Sochi.”

“It’s good to get another point, but the timing of the safety car didn’t help me today and probably cost me three positions. It’s a shame because the team did everything right, but the safety car came out just after I had made my first pit stop. So the luck was not on my side. Apart from that, it was a really fun race and I had to fight really hard. My start was very strong – I gained four places in the first few corners and that was really enjoyable. We showed again that our car is strong in race conditions – probably better than in qualifying – and that’s important because you only score points on Sunday. My target coming into the season was to score points in every race so I’m pleased to have scored in all three so far, but I know we had the potential to score even more points. As a team we are doing a good job and I think there’s much more to come from us in the next few races.”

„Ich bin sehr zufrieden, wie dieses Wochenende gelaufen ist – im Qualifying bereits Rang 13 und nun im Rennen der elfte Platz. Es war ein hartes Rennen, weil wir nur einen Boxenstopp gemacht haben. Und meine Platzierung ist das Maximum, welches wir heute hätten erreichen können. Klar ist es schade, dass wir im Ziel nicht eine Position weiter vorne gewesen sind und uns damit noch mit einem Punkt belohnt hätten. Wie auch immer, ich freue mich jetzt auf das nächste Rennen.“

"After my first lap I think my race was over, unfortunately. I had very little grip on lap 1 and went off the track because of a misunderstanding with another car – I locked my wheels, went off and that made me drop to last... We will need to analyse what happened there, as I felt I had less grip than anyone else. From that point onwards it was a very busy race, but we were battling for nothing unfortunately as the points positions were too far away. . At least I was able to finish the race here – it was important to complete all the laps and to know that, every time I get in the car, I know what it's doing and I feel comfortable. Today was just not our day and we can't afford situations like this as the midfield is very tight. Hopefully in the next race in Russia, my home Grand Prix, we can fight for more points, because that's what we need and we have a car that can do it."

“It was a tough race; I had a good fight with Alonso and Kvyat after the safety car bunched everyone up, but the couple of touches with Kvyat didn’t help things. I didn’t really have the pace to get further after that and the degradation seemed to be more for us than the cars around. It made for a difficult evening, unfortunately, where we struggled with a lack of pace.”

“It was a frustrating race. The deficit in power and performance we had on the straights today was amazing. Sometimes I looked in the mirrors at the beginning of the straights and saw the other cars 300, 400 metres behind, so I forgot completely about that car and started changing settings on the steering wheel and doing my own things, then the next thing I see when I come on the brakes is that car alongside me. We were running close to the points but that’s not enough. Today we never had the pace we had in Australia and China, and, in the end, we had a problem and we decided to retire the car. “It’s frustrating. When the red lights go off you’re motivated and you start fighting, but you’re so behind on the straights that there’s no way you can defend your position. You fight in a fair way with everyone, but you don’t enjoy the battle. “Everyone in the team has been working very hard over this weekend, day and night, and I’m sorry for Stoffel who has had so much bad luck all weekend and then didn’t even start today’s race. “But we’ll keep working hard, and we hope to improve in due course.”

"It definitely hasn't been a good weekend for us. We've had reliability problems on Friday and yesterday, which meant that today we had to do a race starting from the back. It started well, and recovered from P16 to P11 during the first lap – we were definitely catching the points positions there! Unfortunately, all of a sudden after the pit-stop I was involved in an incident with Lance and that was the end of my race. The weekend ends with a DNF, but weekends like this one always happen at some point throughout the year in F1... This is racing! On the positive side, the car feels very good to drive and we can fight for points regularly, so I look forward to the next races."

“The car stopped for some reason. I don’t know what the cause is yet, but I lost power. I had to stop, unfortunately. It happened suddenly – just the power disappeared. Conditions until then were pretty good. The tire wear was a bit lower and it was easier on brakes. It would’ve been a good race. I just look forward now and am happy with the car. It’s running in the points and qualifying in Q3. We’ve had three straight weekends where the car’s been in points positions. I’m looking forward to this continuing.”

I saw Sainz coming out of the pitlane, I was 50 or 60 metres in front of him in the braking zone, and was already turning in and he drove into my side. There is not much else to say, as I have just seen the video and it was ridiculous. I think the race wasn’t going badly. I had a bad start and lost a couple of positions, but boxed early and had a really good beginning to the stint on the soft tyres. I am just disappointed and hope my luck turns round sometime soon. I can be frustrated, but it won’t get me anywhere. On the bright side there are many races to go.

„Das war ein enttäuschendes Rennen für mich. Der Start war gut, ich war der einzige auf weichen Reifen, konnte aber dem Feld ganz gut folgen. Die Safety-Car-Phase kam für uns zu einem eher schlechten Zeitpunkt; wir entschieden uns dazu, keinen Boxenstopp zu machen. Beim Neustart war ich auf Platz acht, als mich andere Autos, die auf neuen Reifen waren, überholten. Nach dem Wechsel auf superweiche Reifen schauten die Rundenzeiten gut aus, doch ich hatte zu viel Rückstand, um auf die Autos vor mir aufschliessen zu können. Wenige Runden vor Schluss musste ich wegen eines Getriebedefekts auf der Strecke stoppen.“

“I had a good start, Kimi struggled a bit off the line so I passed him straight away and then I went round the outside at turn one and overtook Daniel which put me in a good position. After that I could keep up with the leaders, the car was performing really well on the tyres and the pace was good. I think we made the right call with the pit stop to try and undercut the two Mercedes but then the rear brakes failed on lap 12 and it was race over. These things are all a part of racing and there are definitely positives to take away from today. The car was working a lot better here than the previous two races so it’s just an unfortunate ending as we could have scored some really good points.”

“It’s a real shame that we weren’t even able to start the race today. The team discovered a water-pressure issue on the way to the grid. It’s disappointing, obviously, that we come all the way here and can’t even start the race. “We knew from the beginning of the season that the situation we were in was going to be difficult. I have an extremely good relationship with the team, I believe that we’ll get on top of these issues, and I’m confident that I can do a good job when everything comes together. We’re going through a hard time – it’s not fun for us to go through this – but this is what it is at the moment, and today shows that. “It’s frustrating when you do all the preparation work, put in so much effort, we drivers train a lot to keep fit to be able to go racing, and then not being able to start is a shame. It’s been an extremely difficult weekend for me, having two failures on Friday in FP1 and FP2, and now in the race: it’s obviously very disappointing. But I’ll keep my head down, I’ll work hard with the team, and I’m sure there will be some improvements at some point. When they will be, it’s difficult to say, but I’m confident that they’ll come. We’ve lost quite a bit of mileage so it’s definitely not an ideal situation, and we need to make a good step forward soon. Hopefully we can show that at some point in the next few races.”