Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

Ich bin überglücklich. Ich hatte keine Ahnung, wie sich das Rennen entwickeln würde. Wir haben das Qualifying gestern richtig hinbekommen, aber die Temperaturen gingen heute hoch und runter, Wolken nahten und wir wussten nicht, ob es regnen würde oder nicht. Ich hatte einen guten Start und die anderen konnten danach nicht mit meiner Pace mithalten. Ich zog pro Runde beinahe um eine Sekunde davon und dachte mir: „Ja, bleib weiter dran!“ Und so blieb es für den Rest des Rennens. Unser erster Doppelsieg in dieser Saison ist ein großartiges Ergebnis für das Team. Alle haben sehr hart gearbeitet, wir hatten einen fantastischen Boxenstopp und eine super Strategie. Ich habe gesagt, dass ich auf diese Weise gewinnen möchte und als ich über die Ziellinie gefahren bin, war ich einfach nur glücklich, dass ich es geschafft hatte. Das Team hat sehr hart daran gearbeitet, um die Reifen und das Auto besser zu verstehen – und an diesem Wochenende kam alles zusammen. Jetzt gehen wir mit einem Erfolgserlebnis im Rücken nach Monaco, aber wir sind uns der Tatsache bewusst, dass wir noch viel zu tun haben. Es ist sehr wichtig, dass wir alle weiter pushen und genauso hart arbeiten wie im bisherigen Teil der Saison.

Das ist ein perfektes Mannschaftsergebnis für uns. Nach dem ersten Stint befand ich mich in einer schwierigen Situation, weil ich hinter Sebastian festhing. Wir wussten, dass wir ein starkes Auto mit viel Pace hatten und ich glaubte, dass wir schneller waren. Aber auf dieser Strecke ist das Überholen sehr schwierig. Dann trafen wir bei Sebastians Boxenstopp während der VSC-Phase die richtige Entscheidung und blieben draußen. Vor dem Rennen glaubten wir, dass ein Ein-Stopp-Rennen nahezu unmöglich sein würde, aber als wir bemerkten, dass die Reifen besser als erwartet hielten, änderten wir unsere Strategie. Natürlich hätte ich das Rennen lieber gewonnen, aber das Team hat heute großartige Arbeit abgeliefert und seine Entscheidung brachte uns heute diesen Doppelsieg ein. Es ist klasse, heute viele Punkte für das Team eingefahren zu haben. Das nächste Rennen in Monaco könnte für uns schwierig werden. Ich glaube, dass Red Bull dort richtig stark sein wird und Ferrari hat dort im Vorjahr auf der Pole gestanden. Deshalb müssen wir weiter hart arbeiten und an unsere Stärken glauben, um uns weiter zu verbessern.

“I always feel quite good on this track and today has been a nice turning point after the first few races where it hasn’t gone to plan. To come back and get on the podium is really nice. The car behaved really well all race on both soft and medium tyres. It felt balanced and had good pace so I was confident I could push on and achieve a good result. We lost a bit too much time at the beginning behind Kimi and it would have been hard to overtake him. We got a bit lucky with him having the problem and therefore allowing us to get an extra place and increase our speed. After that I could settle down and concentrate on my own race. I saw Sebastian approaching but I knew I had relatively fresh tyres so it would be hard for him to overtake, this allowed me to manage the situation quite well. I had some damage to the front wing which luckily didn’t affect the performance too much. The piece fell off and it only meant a small amount of oversteer so I was able to keep a solid pace and bring it home in third place. We were quick here in the last sector which is all low speed corners so looking ahead to Monaco we can hope for a good result. We will concentrate on the setup, get a good balance and hopefully put ourselves in with a real chance.”

“Our tires didn’t last as long as for the others, so we couldn’t follow the same strategy. We had to stop again and we obviously lost two positions, and also a bit of time during the pit-stop itself. But staying out was not an option today. We had problems finding the right balance of the car and we were struggling with the front tires. Maybe the changes for this weekend had a bad impact on us, worse than the one the others had. So, I am happy to go back to ‘normal’ tires in Monaco as we seemed to struggle a little bit more than the others. Today we just didn’t have the right pace, Mercedes was faster than us and we hadn’t many chances. We tried our best, but something was missing and we need to improve on this. During the whole weekend it has been tough to find the right balance on these new tires. But I see no reason for not being optimistic for the next race.”

“It was certainly a strange race. At the beginning we had good pace and it seemed like Kimi was a bit slower than Max and myself. I thought I was faster than them but then once they picked up the pace I wasn’t really able to go with them. When we pitted for the medium tyre we came out in traffic and lost some rhythm. I also had a spin on the VSC re-start, struggling to keep heat in the tyres, which really put me out of the race. Fortunately there were no walls but it put me in no-man’s land. There were moments where the car was really fast but it was just too difficult to get it every lap. I would set the fastest lap and then the next lap I would nearly spin. There is potential but it’s just hard to extract consistently at the moment, so we have some more to learn with this new package. In the end, it was a pretty boring race but I’m going to take some positives from the potential we have. Monaco should be our strongest circuit to date on raw pace so I’m looking forward to getting there in a few weeks.”

“I had a really good start. I was alongside the Red Bulls, but I didn’t really want to fight them as I knew they were much faster. My job was to stay in seventh and settle down from there. I was able to defend well, keep out of trouble on the first lap, so I was happy. It’s been a strong performance and I think we deserved to get the kind of points we’ve scored in Bahrain and here. We should be able to score points at every race, and we have had the car to do that, we’ve just had some mistakes and mishaps that meant we didn’t score points regularly. It’s good to get some good points on the board. I’m happy we’re back more in our deserved position in the constructors’ championship, as well. We just need to keep this level up and continue to score regularly.”

“I think it’s a very positive result for me and the team. We can be very proud of what we’ve achieved this weekend as this track was not ideal for us. We turned things around well since Friday, did a very good start and managed to finish seventh which I think was the best we could hope for. It feels great to get another good result at home and I hope the fans have enjoyed the race. Many thanks to all for their support! It’s good progress for the midfield fight and important points for the team. We have areas to work on, but we are making good progress. Let’s keep pushing.”

“We started on the Supersoft tyres today because of yesterday’s qualifying, so the plan was to gain some positions in the first couple of laps and then stop very early to change tyres. Instead, we found ourselves losing several positions in the first lap because of the incident at Turn Two, so at that point I thought it was impossible to get any points today. But, luckily, we had a good race, we had a good strategy with a good call for only one stop on the Medium tyres, and we took those four points. “During the race, I was concentrating more on the sky than the cheering grandstands, as in some corners there were very dark clouds. I thought maybe some rain could have helped us, but unfortunately it didn’t come in the end. “It was difficult to overtake today – I was behind Leclerc for a long time – as we are still lacking some straight-line speed to be able to pass. This is something we’re working on; we know where our car’s weaknesses lie and hopefully we’ll find a solution quite soon. We made a good step forward here, but we know it’s going to be a tough battle until the end of the season. It’s important to score points every race and we have done so far for five consecutive races. I’m happy right now.”

“It was a tough afternoon but to score two points in these conditions is not a bad result and a decent reward after a difficult race. I made a good start but I had to go wide to avoid the accident with Grosjean and I lost a lot of positions. It really complicated everything for me because it put me behind a lot of other cars. After that we made the right strategy calls, especially pitting under VSC, but then I hit debris from Verstappen’s car and I picked up some damage. I was struggling with a lot of vibrations and I was lucky to make it to the end. It’s good to come home with some points after starting so far back, but it’s a shame about Esteban’s retirement because we could have scored points with both cars today. We have a lot to improve, but I hope we can be much more competitive in Monaco.”

„Es ist ein tolles Gefühl, wieder in die Punkte zu fahren. Es war ein recht interessantes Rennen, da uns die Wetterbedingungen insbesondere was das Reifenmanagement betrifft herausgefordert haben. Wir haben seit Anfang dieser Saison gute Fortschritte gemacht, und das ganze Team ist motiviert hart zu arbeiten, damit wir uns weiterhin verbessern können. Es wird jetzt wichtig sein, fokussiert zu bleiben. Der nächste Grand Prix ist in Monaco – ich freue mich sehr auf mein erstes Formel-1-Heimrennen.“

We scored no points but it was a good race. I made a good start again with a lot of positions. Then it was just steady running and I did everything I could, but just missed out on points. After the safety car period it was tricky, as tyre warm up was hard and I suffered a little bit there, but all in all it was okay. The medium tyres were pretty easy to manage and I am really happy with the race we had. Eleventh is pretty much everything we could hope for today.

"I had a clean start and made up a few positions on the first lap. The mechanics did an amazing job to get the car ready for today - it was actually finished last night - we just had to do the car setup this morning. We decided to pit under the first safety car and go straight on to the medium to effectively do a one-stop. It worked, but it meant we lost a lot a couple of positions in the beginning. It was difficult to overtake today, I think some of the cars around us had a bit more top speed which made life difficult. I had a good overtake on Marcus at the end to get 12th and if I had made the overtake a little bit earlier there would have been the chance for 11th as well, because the pace was definitely there at the end of the race."

„Ich war in der ersten Hälfte des Rennens auf medium Reifen stark. Danach hatten wir etwas Pech mit dem Virtual Safety Car, das direkt nach unserem Boxenstopp zum Einsatz kam. Das war frustrierend. Im zweiten Lauf hatte ich Schwierigkeiten auf der weichen Reifenmischung. Das Rennresultat war etwas enttäuschend, da wir im Mittelfeld kämpften, und nah an den Punkten waren. Im Allgemeinen war es aber ein gutes Rennen. Ich hatte gute Zweikämpfe und konnte auch fremde Angriffe gut verteidigen. Dass Charles in den Punkten war, ist für das Team sehr positiv. Ich muss nun mein Bestes tun, um in Monaco eine gute Leistung zu haben.“

It’s been a very tough day. I had a good start and I was right in the mix before I almost got caught by a couple of spins ahead of me. I needed to slow down to avoid them but once I was through, I was last. I managed to fight a bit with Toro Rosso and get ahead for a couple of laps. Today, it was the worst I have experienced throughout the whole race. I struggled a lot with my seating comfort which we are looking into.

“A disappointing day on my side of the garage. We were racing well and looking good for some points. Then things went wrong at my pit stop when there was a problem changing the right rear wheel. We lost about twenty seconds and it put us to the back of the pack. A few laps later I lost power and had to park the car. It looks like an oil pressure problem, but we need to wait until the car is back to know exactly what happened.”

“My race was going pretty ok today, I was in a decent position and the speed was good. I was running smoothly and saving the tires. Everything could have been alright, but unfortunately it did not happen. At one point I started losing power; I managed to drive around but obviously not at full speed anymore, so I drove back to the garage. We don’t know more than that about the issue we had, we need to take the car back to the factory and check what happened. Looking at the Championship, this result is far from ideal, and I’m pretty disappointed. There is nothing we could have done differently today, but we need to try and keep pushing.”

“It was messy into turns one and two but in turn three it got a lot messier. I saw a car spin in front of me and a lot of smoke. It happened very quickly so I couldn’t avoid Grosjean spinning backwards into my car. It’s a pity as we were competitive, we have good pace so it’s frustrating not to have shown that yesterday and today. It’s difficult to swallow, especially when it’s not your fault. We’ll have to try again in two weeks.”

"Starting from P12, we were two positions away from P10 so points were clearly the target. Unfortunately, we couldn't achieve any, which is a shame. It's only the fifth race of the season but it's a missed opportunity. The crash with Romain at the start was a big mess, I saw some space on the inside with Nico and I tried to cut the corner as much as possible, but suddenly he came back completely towards us. It took both Nico and myself out. It seems like every weekend I have a peak of adrenaline with different incidents! Clearly it's a big shame not to be able to fight with the others and get a good result. The impact was big but I am fine, I'm just disappointed to be out on lap 1, because you work all weekend for the race and the chance to fight for points, but the excitement ended pretty quickly. Now we just need to focus on the test next week."

“There’s not much to say. I lost the rear end in turn three and I just spun. If you look at the footage, I had wanted to avoid contact with my teammate. Kevin had a bit of a wobble, I lifted off the throttle, and then the car just went. I’m sorry for the others that were involved – there wasn’t much I could do once the car went. Kevin had a good race, which is good for the team. I had wanted a steady race, but that wasn’t today.”

“It was an unfortunate end to the race. I felt that the race was going to come towards us at the end, we had a one-stop strategy and extended the first stint to go very long on the Soft tyres. We had managed the tyres well and we wanted to create a big tyre delta to the others. It’s always hard to predict exactly where we would’ve ended up, but I feel at the end we could’ve had some more chances to overtake. “We had a good launch for the first time this season! The first corner was all about avoiding cars in slippery conditions with a lot of cars spinning off. It was difficult to keep the car on the track, especially at the beginning. We don’t know yet exactly what the problem was that ended our race early, but it looks like the gearbox as I lost drive completely. It’s a shame because we had reasonable pace. “The upgrades we brought here are definitely a first step forward. We’ve been able to make progress especially for qualifying, but there’s still a long way to go and we need to keep improving, and keep bringing some new parts to every race."