Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

Auf dieser Strecke macht das Fahren wahnsinnig viel Spaß. Ich konnte den Moment voll ausschöpfen und jede einzelne Runde, jede einzelne Kurve und das Gefühl im Auto richtig genießen. Suzuka ist eine absolut einzigartige Strecke. Man fährt zur ersten Kurve den Berg hinab, dann geht es bergauf, man fährt unter der Strecke hindurch - es ist eine meiner Lieblingsstrecken. Die Pace war richtig klasse und es war eindeutig das beste Wochenende, das wir hier bislang hatten. Auch die Balance war hier besser als je zuvor. Es war absolut fantastisch. Jeder hier an der Strecke und Zuhause in den Werken verdient ein riesiges Dankeschön für den unablässigen Einsatz, den alle an den Tag legen, um Wochenende für Wochenende immer weiter zu pushen. Dieses Ergebnis war der beste Weg, um sie für all ihre harte Arbeit zu belohnen. Noch sind 100 Punkte zu vergeben, wir müssen also weiter konzentriert bleiben und dürfen nicht nachlässig werden. Das Team hat an den vergangenen Wochenenden fantastische Arbeit abgeliefert. Diese Konzentration und Performance müssen wir weiterhin bringen. Die Harmonie im Team und die Leistung jedes Einzelnen in der Mannschaft ist besser, als alles, was ich bisher erlebt habe. Aber es gibt immer Bereiche, in denen wir uns weiter verbessern können - wir alle zusammen, aber auch ich persönlich. Deshalb werden wir weiter pushen und versuchen, die Messlatte immer höher zu legen.

Das ist ein perfektes Ergebnis für das Team und eine großartige Belohnung für die fantastische Performance der gesamten Mannschaft an diesem Wochenende. Ich freue mich sehr, dass wir das Rennen nach den ersten beiden Startplätzen gestern im Qualifying so nach Hause fahren konnten. Es ist mein erster Podestplatz hier in Suzuka - ein tolles Gefühl. Ich erhalte hier von den Fans immer viel Unterstützung. Das spüre ich und es bedeutet mir wirklich viel. Mein Rennen verlief unkompliziert. Wir hatten sogar einen kleinen Vorsprung, um den Motor zu schonen. Im Fernsehen hat es wahrscheinlich enger ausgesehen, als es tatsächlich gewesen ist. Ich habe mich vor der letzten Schikane einmal verbremst. Deshalb kam Max etwas näher heran, aber davon abgesehen hatte ich alles unter Kontrolle und achtete auf das Auto. Der erste Stint auf den Soft-Reifen war ein bisschen besser als der zweite auf den Medium-Reifen. Auf letzteren gab es etwas Blasenbildung, aber nichts Dramatisches. Alles in allem war es ein großartiges Wochenende für das Team.

“After the penalty and incident with Seb I’m really happy to come away with another podium in Japan. The car felt good and we were able to compete at the front for the entire race, which at this track makes it even better. Judging by a few mistakes he made it looked like Bottas was pushing hard on the last few laps. It’s hard to follow anyway so I just did my best hoping he would make another fault and I could be in a position to take advantage. I felt a little hard done by with the penalty I got while defending against Kimi. I was trying my best to get back onto the track as quickly as possible instead of just cutting the corner, perhaps next time I will just cut the track. The incident with Sebastian was a very similar mistake to mine in China earlier this year, I think he could have passed easier if he had waited. It shows that even the most experienced drivers can make errors when under pressure. I’m now very excited to get to Austin, we have good performance and it’s a great place to visit.”

“Surprisingly, I was able to come through the field and overtake quite easily. That’s not because I thought I couldn’t personally overtake, it’s just not that easy on this track, but I was able to make good use of the downforce we had on the soft tyre. I knew we would be quite vulnerable on the straights as we ran very high downforce this weekend, but I could stay close enough in the corners that I could latch onto the tow of the cars ahead on the straights. It was a good set-up and the first part of the race was a lot of fun. We went on to the mediums to try and cover Kimi and fourth place was kind of written after that. I would have loved a podium and I was kinda of hoping for something to happen up front, but I feel I earned at least a fourth today. It was good to come through the field and on the grid Helmut actually said that he thought fourth place was a little optimistic and possibly out of reach today. So, fourth is like a little victory from the back on this track and it was good to see our strong pace against Ferrari. A podium would have been even sweeter but I can’t complain with the result and I’m pleased for the Team. All that’s left to say is, arigatooooo Japan.”

”After the contact with Max I saw some parts flying off my car; it was damaged pretty badly on the left hand side. Obviously, this affected negatively the rest of my race. What happened is unfortunate and after that it was pretty difficult to drive on. I had lost a lot of downforce, but there was not much I could do. It’s impossible to know what our performance would have been without that accident at the chicane; we had improved the car over the weekend, it was getting better and better, but unfortunately this is what we have got today. It’s been a difficult and poor weekend overall, the result is not ideal. Now we need to look deeply on everything and hopefully we’ll come back at the next race on a more normal situation where we’ll be able to fight.”

”Today, I found it quite inspirational walking through the garage and watching the guys work! All the team is fired up and that certainly helps, as the last couple of weeks haven’t been that easy. The spirit is unbroken despite everything. Races like this are a bit of a hand-over and we know it is difficult from where we are in the point standings, but we don’t have much to lose. We have given everything so far and I believe there’s still something we can learn and understand from the car. So we keep fighting and resisting and we’ll see what the other races bring. As for the collision with Max, I was obviously pushing to pass, I knew he had a penalty, but I also felt that we were fast. I could see that his battery was clipping, while I had saved some energy from mine. I saw a gap and went for it on the inside, he obviously tried to defend and I couldn’t go anywhere, so we touched. However, this is part of racing.”

“Today we had a good result: the best I could realistically hope to achieve. After yesterday’s poor qualifying we made up a lot of positions and I feel we really got the maximum from the race. Our pace was strong and the team delivered a great strategy. We knew we had to be aggressive to beat the Haas and we nearly managed to undercut Grosjean at the pit-stop, but I lost a bit of time battling with Leclerc and I just fell short. At the VSC restart I managed to get really close to Grosjean and when I saw an opportunity I went for it. I am so excited about our performance today. We had to push hard and make some good overtakes: it was a fantastic race.”

“It’s a great day. I’m very happy with the changes we made from FP3 to qualifying to get the feel back in the car. And with the way it behaved in qualifying, we had the courage to put the softs on in Q2 and try to go through on that, which we did. Q3, with one lap, I love it. You know the rain is coming and you’ve got to put everything together. That’s the feeling that I prefer. I had a great lap. You always look afterwards and I was only two tenths from Kimi (Räikkönen). We’re in a great spot to start the race. Starting on the soft will be a big advantage compared to the supersoft, especially with the high temperature tomorrow. We’ll do our best on our side. We’ll see at the end where we are.”

“The team scored some good points today, but I’m not totally happy because our final result was dictated by the penalty yesterday. We have shown great speed all weekend – as the fourth quickest team – but if we don’t start higher up it’s difficult to show it in the race. There were some fun moments today and I had to make a lot of overtaking moves. When you had fresh tyres there was a big pace advantage and our strategy paid off in the end. I was close to catching Grosjean during the final few laps, but there wasn’t a chance to make a move.”

“It was good fun out there today and a very positive race from the team. We made a decent start to be on the brink of the points and then we had to do some overtaking at the end. For us, a point here is the best we could achieve starting from P13, so that’s a very strong result for us. The team executed everything very well; the strategy, the pit-stop, it all worked. We knew we were up against it this weekend, so it’s great value to score and now we need to build on this in the final four races.”

"It was a good start as I managed to overtake Brendon and the first stint was great. I felt good with the car behind Romain and I was pretty close to him, but then we went too long on the first stint as we didn't want to pit into traffic but then several cars undercut us. We put the Soft tyres on during the pit stop and I enjoyed the battles and overtakes on the first few laps, but then I started to have massive blisters on the rear tyres and I was trying to survive at the end. It could have been better today so we need to analyse more deeply what happened. We probably didn't make the best decisions, but that happens sometimes, it's easy to say in hindsight that we could have made different choices. It's just a shame after such a good Qualifying yesterday, It would have been great to reward the team and Honda here in Japan for their home race with some points today."

“Wir wussten, dass es ein schwieriges Rennen wird. Aber wenn man bedenkt, dass wir auf Platz 20 gestartet sind, ist das Resultat P12 eines, mit dem wir zufrieden sein können. Wir hatten gute Rundenzeiten und das Auto hat sich ebenfalls recht gut angefühlt. Ich habe den Grossteil der Renndistanz auf demselben Reifensatz zurückgelegt, was heisst, dass ich mich stark auf das Reifenmanagement konzentrieren musste. Es ist schade, dass wir nicht auf einer besseren Position starten konnten, da wir eventuell um Punkte hätten kämpfen können. Trotzdem war es ein positiver Tag und ich freue mich auf unsere nächste Chance in Austin.”

"I don't feel like I did too much wrong at the start of the race, but I just couldn't get the power down. For the whole first stint I didn't have much grip and poor traction cost me a lot of time. Then on the second set I found myself in traffic, I made a couple of overtakes on both of the Williams but in the end I got stuck behind Marcus. It's a real shame that both cars are outside the points after such a promising result in Qualifying yesterday."

“In spite of the poor result, I did enjoy driving around this track today. The first lap was quite good and intense, and in the Esses especially we were overtaking each other inside and outside and we recovered a few places. In the last couple of laps there was also a good battle with the Williams and [Marcus] Ericsson who were struggling on old tyres, so we had to fight a little bit. “Even though we were too slow all weekend, in the end it was an enjoyable race. “Unfortunately, the five-second penalty I received in the first part of the race dropped me down several positions. It wasn’t a big drama, because we were out of the points anyway, but it’s difficult to understand the stewards’ decision as I had nowhere to go but off the track when Lance [Stroll] came across not having seen me, as he said.”

“It wasn’t a great race for us. It was pretty difficult at the beginning, and there wasn’t really any possibility to resist the quicker cars. We were more or less passengers on the straights. “At least the race turned out a little bit better towards the end, and we managed to beat a few cars on pace. With the tyre degradation, we were able to make them last and make a one-stop work, catch up with some cars and hold some other cars behind us. “I think that was more or less the maximum possible today.”

Today was a difficult day. We had to turn our strategy around to a two-stop, which in the end looked like it could be the quickest strategy to the flag. However, with traffic and other things happening on the track, we didn’t really get chance to fully exploit it, so it was a difficult race. We were able to avoid some of the trouble on the track and gain some positions here and there, so it’s been good in these terms, but at the end of the day we didn’t finish as high as we probably wanted. A very difficult race but I think we as a team did the absolute maximum from what we could today. With our situation, none of us could do any better, so with this in mind I’m very proud of all the boys effort.

With Fernando, I just went around the outside of 130R, I got on the grass and then back on the racing line, we made some contact and then he just went straight on, so we both got penalties. It was just a typical first lap racing incident when things get heated. I just wanted to say to him I didn't push him intentionally or anything like that. After that, the race was quite bad. Nothing went our way today, as races go, it was just a really bad one.

“Das Rennen hat Spass gemacht, selbst wenn ich es nicht so beendet habe wie ich es gerne getan hätte. Der Start war hektisch – ich habe mit einigen Autos um Positionen gekämpft, musste mich aber zurückziehen als es zu eng wurde. Ich habe hier einige Positionen verloren, aber hart darum gekämpft, sie wieder zu gewinnen. Auf der zweiten Runde war ich in einen Unfall verwickelt. Danach haben wir einen Boxenstopp gemacht und die Nase gewechselt. Wir wussten, dass es nicht ideal ist so früh an die Box zu fahren, mussten es aber tun, um um Punkte kämpfen zu können. Danach lief es relativ gut. Ich konnte mich ins Mittelfeld kämpfen, musste das Rennen aber schlussendlich aufgrund eines mechanischen Problems leider frühzeitig beenden. Es ist schade, das Rennen nicht zu Ende zu fahren, aber ich freue mich auf das Nächste und hoffe, dort wieder um Punkte zu kämpfen.”

“I didn’t get the lap time on the first run in Q2 on the softs. Gasly came out of the pit as I started my fast lap – he didn’t do it on purpose, but in sector one it’s just impossible to get out of the way. I was driving behind him, lost downforce, then I made a mistake which cost the lap. It was just bad luck and the nature of the track. It’s frustrating, as I think I could’ve been in Q3 on the soft tire. That was our plan, to go through to Q3 on the soft and start the race on softs. We tried to get out on supersofts to get us into Q3, but it didn’t happen due to the rain. I’ll probably start on the soft tomorrow with the free tire choice. A few people around me won’t, so I think we could have an advantage on them if the supersoft falls apart quickly. Perhaps they’ll fall into traffic when they pit, then I can go along and hopefully get the jump.”

“We tried a different strategy today, starting from sixteenth on the Medium tyre. We were able to show respectable pace relative to the others on softer tyres, but it was always going to be a tough battle starting from where we did. We thought we could make the Medium last a little bit longer than it did, and then it was unfortunate that I had to retire the car as something didn’t feel right at the rear after the pit stop. Whilst there were no points for me today, Carlos and the team had a great race so it was a good effort at a crucial time in the championship battle. We know we have a lot of hard work ahead of us until the end of the season, but we’re still fighting hard.”