Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

To win again at home at the Red Bull Ring is just incredible. I expected it to be good, but not this good, and the car was on rails. It was really nice to drive and the pace was incredible on both tyre compounds. I could push and also look after the tyres which is exactly how you want it to be and I could extend my gap lap after lap. Just like everyone else we learnt from last weekend and we optimised the car even more by improving the set-up. It’s actually hard to put into words because it was so enjoyable to drive and the weekend was the best it could be, so let’s hope we can carry on in the same way. It’s a great reward for everyone in the Team and it was also very nice to have Honda represented on the podium by Tanabe. The fans were also incredible all weekend, so much orange in the grandstands and it’s just great to see people back and enjoying Formula One at the track. There are of course a lot of difficult races coming up and Silverstone will be interesting with the Sprint Race to mix things up. But for now, I’m really happy with the way the whole race went and you don’t often get this type of race, so we all have to enjoy it.

Für mich ist dieser zweite Platz heute eine Position besser als vor einer Woche - und das von Startplatz fünf, so gesehen war es also kein schlechter Nachmittag für mich. Auch als Team konnten wir eine ordentliche Punkteausbeute einfahren, wenn man den Abstand berücksichtigt, den wir bei der reinen Pace auf Red Bull haben. Aus meiner Sicht ist es schön, wieder als Zweiter auf dem Podium zu stehen und ich glaube, dass wir heute das Bestmögliche herausgeholt haben. Die Reifen haben gut gehalten, was eine Überraschung war. Jetzt stehen zwei Wochen voller harter Arbeit an, um uns auf Silverstone vorzubereiten. Es wird großartig, die Fans dort wieder zu sehen und ich hoffe, dass wir bei der Pace nachlegen können, damit sie einen richtigen Kampf geboten bekommen.

I'm extremely happy with today’s result. Another podium and a lot of points for us as a team. A very good day. The only thing that's disappointing is the fact we could've been P2, but at the same time that's also a big positive. Our pace today was extremely strong, especially in the second stint against very fast cars and against Mercedes. A lot of positives and altogether a very good day – a huge thank you to the whole team for their hard work and giving me such a great car. We'll keep pushing to take this momentum into our home race at Silverstone in a couple of weeks.

Platz vier ist nicht das Ergebnis, das ich mir gewünscht hatte, aber es sind dennoch ein paar Punkte. Kurz vor meinem Überholmanöver gegen Lando hatte ich einen Schaden am Auto. Danach fühlte sich das Heck komisch an und es wurde im Verlauf des Rennens immer schlimmer. Ansonsten wäre es klar Platz zwei für mich geworden. Max liegt im Moment vorne, deshalb müssen wir unser Auto verbessern und damit beginnen, an jedem Wochenende bessere Leistungen abzuliefern. Das Team arbeitet unglaublich hart und genauso müssen wir weitermachen, um mehr Performance zu finden.

I’m leaving Austria feeling confident about the work we are doing weekend after weekend. Today we executed a smooth race with a good strategy, great tyre management and teamwork. We chose to start on Hards, which we knew would make us struggle in the first few laps. That cost me a couple of positions at the start due to the lack of grip but I knew my race was not about lap 1.
The target was to extend the first stint as much as possible and I managed to maintain a very solid pace saving my tyres. I actually went very long before stopping for the Mediums and from there it was flat out until the chequered flag. I caught up quickly to the cars ahead after passing Yuki (Tsunoda) and then thanks to our teamwork with Charles and a good overtake on Daniel (Ricciardo) I managed to cross the line less than 10 seconds behind Checo (Perez) for P5. We’ve had two good Sundays here in Austria but we are still far from where we want to be. The ambition and motivation is high, so we’ll keep pushing hard to improve for the upcoming races.

I’m obviously not very happy with my race today. On the fourth lap I had the position and I out-braked Lando but he pushed me off the track which pretty much ended my race. As for the other incidents with Charles, I still have to review the situations and look at the incidents because I thought that I was ahead in both of them, especially the second one but it’s hard to say right now. I braked as late as possible, we were in dirty air and we had very old tyres so I lost the rear on the second one into Turn 6. I’m very sorry for Charles and how I affected his race because that’s not the way I like to race. I don’t feel happy with myself for compromising the race for another driver. But I am very happy for Max and the rest of the Team, it was great that we could get more points today at our home race at the Red Bull Ring. We move on and I’m looking forward to the next race at Silverstone.

It was a nice day for the team with a podium for Lando and getting into the points for me. That was good. I just had a pretty fun race. It was busy, trying to attack and defend. It’s one I could enjoy and take some fulfilment from. The defence was tough. I was trying everything I could, every trick in the book to stay ahead. I think I held on as long as I could and Sainz was just a bit quicker at the end with a fresher tyre – but I can’t complain with the race and the result. A better day. Happy to have finished the first triple-header of the season. As fun as the triple-headers are, they’re tiring. Everyone can enjoy a break now. We’ll look forward to Silverstone and the new format there. It should be interesting!

It was a frustrating race for me, as I felt I could have got an even better result. Splitting the strategy between me and Carlos paid off for the team in the end. I was struggling to fight my way ahead of Daniel on the Hards in the closing laps of the race and so I let Carlos by to give it a shot, which worked out well for us. Anytime I saw a gap I tried to take the opportunity. There were two close ones with Checo and I think he knows he was a little bit over the limit.
We have already spoken and cleared the air and, in the end, it’s all part of the game. A 5th and 8th place is not what we want, but I think that we did a solid job today. We’ve been working extremely hard, and every step forward is important. We have to stay consistent and continue like this and hopefully we can confirm out strong race pace in the next few races.

I think today was harder than we imagined, but the good thing is we’re consistently scoring points. We thought we would benefit more from the two-stop strategy, but we struggled more than expected on the Softs at the start of the race. There are some positives to take away though and we still showed some strong pace out there. We’re continuing to battle at the top of the midfield but it’s disappointing to not be finishing further up the grid today. We’ll review all the data tonight and then look forward to Silverstone, which is a track I love.

It was difficult to score points today and we knew this starting from so far back. We are happy with the point, although we know we deserved more this weekend, but it’s better than nothing. It was a tense and a good battle with George [Russell] on-track this afternoon and in the end, we had better tyres and managed to accomplish the overtake. On a positive, we saw some good improvements from the team this weekend and the car felt good across all three days here. I feel more confident now going into Silverstone for the next race with the car and the tyres and I’m enjoying being more competitive.

Today was so close, yet so far. I got off the line well at the start, but then Tsunoda had quite a big lock up and cut in front of me to avoid going into his teammate, so I had to get on the brakes and lost a couple of places. That didn’t really change the outcome of our race as there were faster cars that were always going to finish ahead of us. That P10 point would feel like a race victory for us, so I was fighting with everything I had. Of all the drivers to have behind you in this situation, Fernando wouldn’t be who you’d choose; he was flying and holding him off just wasn’t possible on my tyres. We’re all disappointed to miss out by such a small margin, but we’re making real progress and we’ll take the positives on to Silverstone.

It’s been a difficult day for me. I struggled with pace during the race and tyre management was really tricky. My Qualifying was good yesterday so it’s frustrating, but we need to go away and review the issues from today, so we don’t make the same mistakes again next time out in Silverstone.

It was not the race we were hoping for today. I think it is clear, with hindsight, that starting on the Softs was not ideal, although we managed to keep ourselves in the fight for points during the first phase of the race. When we made our first stop to get onto a set of new Hards, we came out in quite a bit of traffic. With cars on different strategies and tyres, it meant we lost time and did not take advantage of the peak of the tyre early in the second stint, which impacted our race. It is a disappointing end to the triple-header, but I am excited to get going for our home race at Silverstone in a couple of weeks. It is a very different circuit and we also have a new weekend format, so it is a clean slate and a chance to bounce back.

A frustrating day: just as last week, our race was compromised on the first lap. I had contact with Esteban and had to pit: we had good pace afterwards but everyone was pretty close and it was very difficult to recover much. I got stuck behind a Williams, then even got a penalty – a weekend to forget. Hopefully we can have a better race in Silverstone as the performance was not bad.

It wasn’t a very eventful day from my side; we stayed out of trouble on the opening laps and then I ran on my own for most of the race. I felt like we were still lacking overall pace, but there were places where the car felt much better than last week, so we’ve clearly made some steps forward. We will go away and see what we can improve for next time out.

It was a race in which the car was pretty ok but we just lacked that little bit to be in the top ten. We had a first long stint on hards, then on mediums we were able to catch up to the guys in front fighting for tenth. Alonso went past Russell, I went close, then had the contact with Seb. We came together and that was it, in the end it didn’t change the end result as we would have both fallen a bit short of the points.

It was not an easy race today, which ended with a trip through the gravel because of the misunderstanding with Kimi [Räikkönen]. I guess he just did not see me in front of him. The first I knew about it was the contact I felt on the left rear. I had made a good exit out of Turn Four and was pulling ahead of Kimi on the right as we approached Turn Five. I do not think there was any intention from Kimi. Even before that, we did not have the speed to fight for points today. The balance inside the car felt alright, but the cars on the Medium tyres had better performance in the opening stint when I was stuck in traffic without any clean air. It is disappointing not to score points, but we will work hard to understand where we can improve before we get to the next race at Silverstone.

It was challenging - the softer tires meant that we had to do a bit more managing in general. There was a part of the race where our pace was matching what Alfa Romeo and Williams were doing, so it just seems that we weren’t able to consistently do those lap times. We will have to analyze what we can do better but nonetheless I think we managed to learn something, especially at the beginning the race. We had a good first lap and we were able to be in the mix right away in T1 and T2, so lots learned on that side and now we’re going into Silverstone with an open mind.

We went on alternative strategies – we went on two stops, which didn’t work. I think the drop off of the tires wasn’t as big as we were expecting but it was the blue flags. You’re not able to keep up your pace because you have to stop more. It was a long afternoon.

It was unfortunate for our race to end early today. There wasn’t much I could have done as I was sandwiched between Mick [Schumacher] and Antonio [Giovinazzi] at Turn 3 in a racing incident. It’s one of those things and a consequence of starting the race at the back. There’s always a chance for fights and contact and it’s easier to be caught up in trouble there. The team and I can’t seem to catch a break at the moment. We’ll reset, restart from zero and prepare for Silverstone. The only way we can go is forwards.