Sebastian Vettel (4th): “Our strategy was a risk today – if it works then you’re the king and if it doesn’t you can be the idiot! Fortunately it worked and the team did a great job. I had a bad start and lost a lot of ground. It was difficult to pass from there, as unfortunately we don’t have extra speed on the straights, so we had to fight in the corners as well as we could. Then around lap 20 something happened to the car, I don’t know what it was, maybe there was some friction in the car, but fortunately the problem solved itself. In the meantime though, I lost connection to the group ahead and the tow, so around three to four seconds. I had to come back from there and it was a tough fight. The cars ahead pitted, so I stayed out as we tried to overshoot them. We were watching the lap times throughout and in the end it worked. So, some good points and we achieved our maximum today, which was fourth place.”
Mark Webber (6th): “We could have got more points today, so it’s a bit disappointing, but at least we got some. We lost out on the start and the first lap. I lost a lot of time behind (Nico) Hulkenburg, he seemed to spend every second lap going through the chicane, but the stewards left him alone which was frustrating. I got him in the end, but I lost a lot of time. I’ve had a better day than Lewis (Hamilton) and got more points, but Fernando (Alonso) won the race. It’s good to get some points, but you always want a bit more. It could have been worse for us today.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal: “As a team performance today it was a great effort – especially after difficult starts and first corner where positions were lost. Both drivers produced excellent races and I think that the strategy and pit stops were well optimised. The unfortunate thing today was the time that Mark lost behind Hulkenburg, who went off the circuit a few too many times in our opinion. But we got very valuable points. Our objective prior to the weekend was to try to limit the damage, so to come out of the weekend back in the lead of the Drivers’ Championship with Mark, while extending the lead of the Constructors’ Championship is more than we could have expected.”
Fabrice Lom, Renault, Principal Engineer Track Support: “What a difficult race for us. We had bad starts with both drivers, so we were far back in the field at the beginning, but we stayed focused. We were very strong during the race and little by little we went up the order. We also tried a different strategy with Sebastian that worked well, so congratulations to our strategy guys. It meant Sebastian went up to fourth place. Mark made some great moves to overtake Michael (Schumacher) and (Nico) Hulkenburg and finished sixth. We took more points from McLaren and more points than Hamilton, so it’s a very good result for us today.”
