Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

This is a day that I will remember forever! It is for sure the most special win of my career so far. It is the best podium of the season and to see the full pit straight packed with people cheering and showing their support was a dream. The team did an incredible job today; they gave us an amazing car, and I can’t say thank you enough to everyone that has supported me and helped get me to this point.

Even starting P19, I believed that this might be possible. On the first start, I made up a lot of positions and then realised we would get another good chance to gain positions after the red flag. That gave us a good chance, and I felt that I had the speed to fight for the win. We obviously gave up some positions under the Virtual Safety Car, but we had the pace on the Medium tyre to come back through and take the victory.

It’s frustrating to be so close to victory and not to achieve it but that is racing sometimes. Despite that, it is a brilliant result for the team, and I want to say massive congratulations to Kimi on winning his home race. There are many positives both I and the team will take away from this weekend. We showed great pace all weekend and fought hard throughout.

The Virtual Safety Car was definitely a moment where the race changed. At the time, no one could have known what the right call was. The team chose to split strategy between the two cars and that was the best decision we could have made. We will never know how the race might have unfolded otherwise but Kimi did an amazing job. We raced each other hard but always with respect, and it was good fun fighting wheel-to-wheel for the win.

It’s not the way we wanted our weekend to finish and we have to turn the page and look ahead to Madrid next week.

A huge thank you to all our tifosi who have supported us here at our home race. We will make sure to come back stronger.

For us it was really good to be back on the podium, it is always a special one here in Monza. We had to fight for it and it wasn’t made easy, but I think it was overall a great performance from us. The main limitation is just that we were very quickly struggling with the deployment on the straights compared to the Mercedes-powered cars and there were a few issues still there. We pitted on to the Hard tyre and made our way up the field well. The tarmac had opened up in turn two and I drove around the corner, and suddenly just went straight because of the loose gravel of the tarmac. So then the McLarens got back into the overtake and it took some time to get it back again. Despite this, I think we did a great job, really maximised our performance and can be proud of the result today. I tried everything I could and even got into the lead during the race, which was exciting. We just couldn’t quite match the Mercedes cars unfortunately, but to be on the podium was an extremely good end to the weekend

I'm happy with the race, finishing fourth was a good result for us today. The race was tough, the car was tricky, and I felt I drove well to maximise what we had. The second half was very strong, using the slipstream brought me back into the fight, and the battles with Lewis [Hamilton] and Oscar on the last lap were enjoyable. It was good, hard racing, and to come out ahead was satisfying.

Despite the result, it's clear we're not where we need to be. This weekend highlighted our weaknesses - we're lacking in general performance, especially in Qualifying, and our straight-line speed is a disadvantage. Even with recent wins, we still have a lot of work to do as a team. We know our strengths and weaknesses, and the challenge now is to improve for the rest of the year.

I think this weekend was definitely the strongest I've felt for a while, and my pace was the most encouraging it has been in some time. It was a tough battle out there for sure. The racing was quite tricky with the back-and-forth effect, especially with Lewis [Hamilton] and then Max [Verstappen], which made it difficult to break away. You had to be quite smart in how you played it to avoid losing time.

Ultimately, we were the third-quickest team today. Mercedes were clearly a lot quicker than everybody, and even Max had more pace than we anticipated. It was a good result for the team and probably the best result we could have got. It was an intense, hot race, but it’s felt much better and hopefully, we can continue this positive momentum going forward.

I know how hard everyone has worked to bring the latest updates to the car and I’m grateful for all the effort that continues to go in, both at the track and back at the factory. We knew we would be losing some performance on the straights and that made the race quite difficult for us. We would have liked to achieve a better result given all the work that has gone into the car, but we’ll take the learnings from this weekend, regroup and keep working. The team will keep pushing and we’ll look to come back stronger at the next race.

It has been an incredible weekend. To be honest, we can all be very pleased with what we have achieved and finishing P7 today, best of the rest, top of the midfield is a really good achievement. Of course, we wanted more but we also have to be realistic and today's result is probably the best we could have achieved with what we have right now. So, in the end, I am happy. We all dreamed after yesterday but it was back to reality today! I had two good starts and led a lap so that was what we wanted at the start. After that, the others closed me down and I was fighting with Lando [Norris], who has won the last two races, and, at the end, finished three seconds behind Lewis [Hamilton] who has also been strong recently. There are so many positives to take away and so many memories from the weekend, which I will remember for a long time. We'll debrief as a team, take the points, which are so valuable to our Championship battle, and turn our focus to a new track in Madrid next weekend.

It was a positive race for us, and it’s great to get some points at one of our home races, with both myself and Yuki finishing in the top 10. After the restart, it was a bit of a lonely race for me once we were on the Hard tyre as there weren't many overtakes to be made. Still, I think P8 was the best result we could have achieved today, and considering the pace Alpine showed throughout the weekend, it was a good damage-limitation race for us. Looking ahead to Madrid next week, I drove the new track in the sim and it looks like a proper drivers’ circuit. I think it’s going to be fun, but it will also present some challenges, as it’s a very technical track. Full credit to the team for the work they’re doing, we have a strong car that has been competitive at every circuit so far, and that gives us a lot of confidence heading into the upcoming rounds.

After a race like today, with all the emotions and where we were in the context of the race, it's difficult not to be frustrated. I'm frustrated with myself, as it could have been much better and for that I'm sorry to the team. We made a good start and made up some places and was running as high as fourth at the restart after the Red Flag early in the race. As a driver, when you're fighting for these positions, it gives you an extra buzz and motivation and you want more, and not to lose it. I was following closely behind Max [Verstappen] and had a big snap going into Turn 6 and went deep into the gravel. Thankfully we avoided the barrier, but the car handling felt different afterwards, so we probably picked up some floor damage. After that, I just tried to re-focus and try to pick up points for the team. I'm disappointed with myself right now, but after some time to reflect, hopefully I can look at it as a good recovery.

We had a good race today, I’m really happy with the result and to be back in the points. A massive thank you to everyone at VCARB for helping me get back up to speed so quickly. I was a little concerned about making the Medium tyres last until the end, but they behaved better than expected. I’m really enjoying learning all the new aspects of the car and continuing to build with every opportunity I get in the car. If any future opportunities come my way, then of course I’ll be ready. But the most important thing is that Isack continues to recover well, and I wish him all the best.

I think I gave everything I had today. The start definitely didn’t make things easy for us, and once you lose positions on the opening lap, it's always a challenge to recover. We pushed hard and probably used the tyres a bit too much, but that's part of trying to fight back. The Racing Bulls were quite strong today, especially on the straights, and keeping up with them was more tough than expected.

Still, the team gave me a car capable of fighting much closer to the points than we expected, and we'll keep building from that heading into Madrid next week, where hopefully we’ll have better opportunities.

Overall, we knew this was always going to be one of the more difficult weekends for us given the characteristics of the circuit, so considering that, it wasn't a bad day. The second start was much better, and I managed to gain a few positions on the opening lap, but unfortunately, I lost out again shortly afterwards. We'll need to review exactly what happened there and understand if there was something we could have done differently.

From then on, it was a fairly straightforward race. We extracted what we could from the package today, and that's about where we were this weekend. We'll go away, review everything and turn our attention to Madrid.

First of all, happy to see Charles unharmed after such a big accident. On our side, we executed a good race today and a strong weekend overall given our limitations. We put together a solid qualifying yesterday and had a good start and race pace today. Boxing under the VSC got us ahead of Ocon with a great pit stop from our mechanics and good pace allowed us to overtake Bearman at the end. I'm now very much looking forward to Madrid next weekend.

It was a pretty tough race. I had a really good first lap from the pit lane and made up quite a few places, but at the restart I lost part of my front wing after contact with Nico, so I had to box and lost over 30 seconds. It’s a shame because we had really good speed for the race, but with the way the strategies played out after the restart, nobody really boxed again apart from under the VSC, so unfortunately, we had too much time to make up. Without the issues, I think we had a pretty good chance to move through the field. Overall, it’s been a difficult weekend with the engine penalty, but we managed to solve a lot of the problems we were facing yesterday and had good speed today, so there’s a lot to take away from the weekend

I had a good start, both times, I made up a few spots – but then after that, honestly, we just weren’t quick enough. It was clear to me from the early laps I was having to push a lot more than the others to stay with them, then ultimately my tires paid the price for that. On top of that, I didn’t catch the VSC, a lot of people behind me that did ended up overtaking me, so that’s a shame – we could have finished a couple of spots higher. The fact of the matter is we were just slow, and especially at a track like Monza you get exposed to that. We’ve seen a step forward this weekend with the upgrade, we weren’t quite there with the balance today, so we finished where we did, but there are positives.

At the end of the day I don’t think we were quick enough, but I think we did a really good job this weekend by looking to maximize everything we had. We tried everything to get the most from the car and mitigate our issues, there was some solid work from inside the garage. My first start was mega, we were up in the points fighting with Lewis and the Audis, it was really good. On the second start, there’s a few things we need to review, but other than that – the homework we’ve done, getting good starts and all of that, it’s been pretty strong. We can take satisfaction from that.

We tried to go long and make it on one set of hard tyres after the red flag, but inevitably had some degradation towards the end of the race. It was worth the gamble to try. Race pace was the best we’ve had in awhile, due to taking a new PU this weekend, but it also shows what we have underneath us and what we have to do to get to where we want to be. We need to review the strategy from today and see what we could’ve done differently - we had a decent race, but there are always things to tidy up. Madrid will be a completely different track, and it won’t be easy, but we’re looking forward to the challenge.

We had to retire the car with a suspected hydraulic issue, but we were struggling in the race anyway. We know we don't have the power we need at the moment and today was further proof of that. On paper, Madrid looks slightly better for us so the focus shifts to that now.

It was a very difficult race for us. We were losing a lot of time on the straights, which made it extremely difficult to fight the cars around us. Our pace through the corners was much closer to the others, so it was frustrating to see such a big difference in the straights. We should have some parts coming to help us on the straights and with the next Ferrari engine. The team is pushing hard to get everything in place as soon as possible, and hopefully that will put us in a much stronger position for the upcoming races.

I think the first stint of the race was one of the most positive so far. It felt like we were in the mix with the Williams for a long time, but unfortunately on the second stint we lost a lot of time. We had a slow pit stop which put us into blue flag territory which made it difficult to get into a rhythm and ultimately, compromised our race. We had a much more trouble-free weekend that’s allowed us to focus on improving the finer details rather than solving problems. Our race pace looked slightly better than our previous GPs and we finished with both cars, so we’re making progress.

My race today ended early after I picked up some damage to the car when I hit a kerb. We decided to stop to make sure there was no further damage. Until then, I was battling with the Cadillacs and trying to get the most out of the car. Now we look ahead to Spain next week and a new circuit for all of us.