Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

It was hard to imagine what this would be like – but it’s everything I dreamed of, everything I\'ve ever wanted to achieve. Aside from winning a Championship, I think this is as good as it gets in terms of feelings, in terms of achievement. It was an incredible race, but the support of the fans made the difference today. The last few laps, I was looking into the crowd, trying to take it all in and enjoy the moment. Shout out to my grandstand in the corner. They were amazing. They cheered me on every lap, and it was really a beautiful thing.

As for the race itself, it was about as stressful as they can get. It’s a long 52 laps, you never knew what was going to happen, especially when it was raining earlier. But the team made good decisions, we pitted at the right times and got an amazing result. Thank you to the team for their incredible work - these are memories I’ll have forever.

Today didn’t end how I wanted it to for me but well done to the team on a really successful day. A 1-2 at our home Grand Prix is brilliant and it’s a great chunk of points for us. Whilst it was a frustrating one for me with the penalty, we had a rocket ship of a car, so thank you to the team for all their work which meant we could pull such a gap over the rest of the field. I’ll use the frustration of today to fuel us further at the next weekend, but for now, we can reflect on a great weekend for McLaren.

I am ecstatic — this is such a special day for the team and for me personally. That first podium feeling... I cannot put it into words. It was such an intense race with changing conditions all the time, and you always feel like you are right on the edge.

We made the right calls today, especially stopping later for slicks — that decision was crucial and made all the difference. The battle with Lewis in the final stint was really intense. He was closing the gap, but I managed to keep him behind and even pull away a little as the tyres came in. I think if it had been a dry race, the day would have looked very different for us, but we made the most of the conditions and took every opportunity.

Starting from last on the grid and finishing on the podium honestly feels kind of surreal. It’s going to take a few days, a few moments, to process everything and take it all in. It’s been a great team effort from start to finish, and I am really proud of what we achieved together. Now, we have two weeks to enjoy this and celebrate properly before we get back to work – and finish the first half of the season on a high.

Not the result we were hoping for today but we’re continuing to grow as a team and I’m also getting more in tune with the car. Third place felt within reach at times but credit to Nico on his first podium, he drove a strong race. Silverstone always puts on a great show and the changing weather definitely made things interesting. Big thanks to the amazing crowd for all the support this weekend, it is always great to be home.

Today wasn’t great. We didn’t think it was going to be so wet today; the weather forecast overnight changed and it was not in our favour, so it was really difficult with the rear wing that we had today. Every time we were low on downforce and couldn’t balance it out in the high and low speed, with the tools that we had. Of course, I had the spin and we lost a lot of positions at the restart. I don’t really know what happened as I tried to go on the throttle, but we recovered it as much as we could to get to P5. Even after that happened, I continued and the car had no pace which wasn’t great. From a positive side, we got our strategy right and did the right thing with the pit stop and staying on the inters. All the calls were correct but the inters just lacked a bit of pace. That is racing though, we will never be happy with fifth, but we move on to the next race. The race wasn’t that enjoyable for me but it was nice to see Nico get his first podium and I’m sure he will be celebrating tonight. Spa is next and my favourite on the calendar, so hopefully we will go a bit better there.

It is an incredible result for the whole team to finish in sixth place. I don\'t think we expected to be in that position after our Practice sessions, so credit to everyone for their effort this weekend. It\'s made even more sweet that it\'s at Silverstone, the home race for Enstone, with so many staff members here watching in the grandstands. It\'s a great boost of motivation for everyone, so I am very happy. We had some nice on track battles with drivers we don\'t normally fight with like Fernando [Alonso], Lewis [Hamilton] and Max [Verstappen], so that was fun. It was all about judging the risk and we just tried to go for it. We took the risks and it paid off with the right strategy calls and great pit-stops. I am looking forward to being at the factory this week to continue the hard work and hopefully seeing some smiles tomorrow morning!”

I feel like it was a missed opportunity today despite scoring some points. It was difficult to read with the rain falling again and we lost some positions in the first pit-stop. For the second pit-stop we pitted too soon and I lost a lot of time on a slightly damp track with slick tyres. We had some good pace but in the end we weren\'t able to capitalise on an eventful race. I am very happy for Nico [Hülkenberg] to score his first podium and I hope he enjoys the celebrations.

I’m happy with our race today. We got the balance right between risky and safe, and bounced back from a tricky day yesterday. Towards the end of the race, we had really good pace, good rhythm, and managed to get Alonso on the last lap. I loved the conditions, where the racing line is so small and there’s no room for mistakes. Looking to the next race, we collected a lot of useful data this weekend, which will help us get on top of the issues before Spa.

Very mixed weekend for us at Silverstone – we showed some decent pace during Practice on Friday, which unfortunately we couldn\'t build on during Qualifying and started from the back today. The team made some good strategy calls during the race and overall a good result. I really struggled with tyre degradation and unfortunately we weren\'t in a position where we could fight for more. [Nico] Hülkenberg had a lot more grip during that last stint and with the level of degradation we got the best possible result today.

It’s always difficult making the right calls in conditions like today but sadly, we didn’t manage to do that. We opted to go to the Hard tyre after the formation lap and we then had a 25-minute window of dry weather, which should have enabled us to put them to good use. Unfortunately, we had 15-minutes of Virtual Safety Car running. Once we were running, we were seconds a lap quicker than others but just had too much time to make up.

We were then a few laps too early pitting back to the slick tyre after the track had dried once again. We put on the Hard tyre and suffered with warm-up issues. I spun and lost ground; we were fortunate to be able to fight back to P10 but overall, that was a bad day and not how I wanted my home race to go. We will look to learn from this and ensure we come back stronger before the summer break.

It was a tough race. We switched to slick in the early laps – in hindsight, that wasn’t the right choice with the rain coming, and we lost a lot of time throughout the race. I got tapped and spun around at one stage, but even with all that, we were P11 and fighting for the points, so it’s a real shame. We’ve been so fast this weekend and it’s just disappointing to end like that. They were tough conditions out there, and there’s only one racing line so I couldn’t overtake Russell at the end. The positives were that the car was fast, and I feel really confident with car balance and the step that the car has taken.

I had a good race, keeping out of trouble, managing the tyres and had good pace. Unfortunately, towards the end and on slick tyres, I was about to overtake Charles, but he lost the car into turn 15, came across the track and hit my front wing and front floor. We both went off, losing a lot of positions and I had a damaged car until the end of the race. It seems to be the story of my season so far and it\'s very annoying that different issues continue to impact our weekends. I\'m driving well and I know better days will come, but it’s frustrating at this point. I\'m looking forward to the two-week reset and hopefully we can have a better second half of the season. Massive thanks to every Williams fan out there this weekend! Your support has been amazing! Thank you.

It was an extremely frustrating race. From the beginning when I was in the middle of two cars, I thought there was going to be contact and as soon as I saw, I backed off but there wasn’t room for three cars. I glad everyone was okay and it was a miracle my car was fine, and after that we made all the right choices though we didn’t box for a new set of inters. That slipped through our hands and it’s not usually something that happens to me.The thing that happened with Ollie at the end I’m sad about – I’m sad for the team as well – as we both deserved more from today, we deserved to be in the points from where we came from, so we’ll review to improve.

It was a really tough race from start to finish. In retrospect, my decision to stop on the formation lap for slicks was not the right one, but I don’t think it changed much because our pace just wasn’t there today. I went quite extreme with the set-up on my car for the last few races, and it paid off in the dry. However, in the conditions we saw here today, it didn’t seem to work as well. There is a lot of work ahead of us. Congratulations to Nico for his podium, it\'s a great achievement for him and his team.

It was not easy out there at all today but somehow it was not really that messy a race for myself. I just struggled with the pace a lot and even in the dry I didn’t have great pace. The rain and the conditions were the main issue today and then I had massive deg on the tyres, as usual. The incident with Ollie was really tricky, the touch itself was very light and in those conditions, it can have massive consequences. I found him to say sorry immediately after the race. In terms of short runs, I have a couple of positives to take away from this weekend but on the long runs, somehow, I just deg like crazy. I had good confidence in the rain so we need to look into why I couldn’t find the pace. The downforce may have contributed but it’s much more than that, we were still slower than we should have been. The car should be different for Belgium, and we will go away and work hard in the time we have off until then.

I was really looking forward to today\'s race, so it was disappointing not to be able to get out there and try to make up for the result yesterday in conditions that opened up a lot of opportunities. It was not clear what the issue was at the time, which took some time to investigate during the race. All I know is that I could not pull away from the box. We tried a few things to get going again, but in the end, we had to retire the car. As a racer, days like today are when you want to be out there and as we have seen from the others starting further back there were possibilities to make big gains today. It was a good weekend in terms of learnings which we can take into the next races. I followed the race as it unfolded. It was an exciting one and well done to Pierre and the team for scoring points at our home race. With two weeks between races, we will now go back to Enstone and work hard for the final push before the summer break.

First of all, congratulations to Nico! Seeing him fight for the podium and achieve this result after so many years in Formula One means a lot. He is the best teammate I have ever worked with — both as a driver and as a person — and he absolutely deserves this moment: I am genuinely happy for him. It’s a special day for the team and, even though my own race didn’t go to plan, I am proud to be part of this. I’ll keep working hard and hopefully be up there as well someday. Looking back at how the race went for me, I am rather disappointed: I took a risk by switching to the medium tyre, expecting the track to dry quicker with the conditions we had but, unfortunately, it didn’t go the way I hoped. I pushed on the restart, lost the car, and that was the end of my race, on top of an already challenging weekend. I am always very self-critical and I know I let the team down today, because we had the potential for an even stronger result. But these things are all part of the learning curve. Now, we\'ll celebrate Nico and head into a couple of weeks without racing, which we\'ll use to keep training and working on improving even more ahead of the summer break.

Racing in these tough conditions means that it’s always a little bit of a gamble out there. At the start of the race, I was following Charles and it seemed we had a good pace; we were on the same strategy, but it wasn\'t the right one. During the laps we spent behind the Safety Car, I couldn’t see much due to the heavy rain and the tyre temperature dropped. After the restart, I wish I could have maybe had a bit more margin, but when I saw the red light of the back of Kimi’s car, it was already too late as there was just zero visibility. Thankfully, I’m okay. Now we reset, and I’m already looking forward to racing in Spa in a couple of weeks.

That was a tough day. I wasn’t sure about stopping for the Hard tyre in the opening laps, but we made the call. Sadly, the Virtual Safety Car came out shortly afterwards and I couldn’t build any temperature in the tyre. I struggled once we were back underway to generate the necessary heat and that left me unable to utilise any pace advantage we may have had as the track dried.

Once the rain hit, the conditions became treacherous. Even once the Safety Car had come back in, visibility was still very poor and there was lots of standing water. That is what caught out Hadjar and that was just unfortunate for the both of us. I tried to continue but the diffuser damage I suffered was too much and we had to retire the car. A weekend to forget then but we will look to come back stronger in Spa.

Unfortunately, our race ended early due to a racing incident. We made the right call on tyres and had a strong start, so it’s a shame we couldn’t show the car’s full potential. I think we had a really good car today, especially suited to the mixed conditions. It was a race full of opportunity, and we missed out on some big points. Looking ahead to Spa in a few weeks, we’re aiming for another weekend in the points, it’ll be another special one in an F1 car.