Jenson Button (4th): “At the start, I thought I’d take it easy on the rear tyres, because we saw earlier in the weekend how quickly they were going away, and I think doing that helped me towards the end of my first stint when I was pulling in Lewis.
“On the Prime tyre, I had a similar issue with rear-end stability, so not being able to challenge a Red Bull car that had 30 extra laps on its tyres showed us that they were very quick around here today. But it’s a circuit where we knew they’d be competitive, and probably one that was going to be difficult for us, so I go to Japan pretty happy.
“We’ve got a good upgrade for Suzuka: we’ll have something that we tried to put on the car this weekend but couldn’t – for reliability reasons. Coupled with our planned-for-Suzuka upgrade, it should hopefully be a bit of a double-whammy.
“My championship hopes were dented a little bit by Mark [Webber] finishing ahead of me, but the points gap to the front is just a race victory away. It shows there’s still everything to play for – one bad race can cost you a lot of points.”
Lewis Hamilton (DNF): “I’m still not exactly sure what happened with Mark and me. But, telling it from my point of view, I saw that he’d made a mistake, and had got caught up with the backmarkers, so I was in position to slipstream him. I was on the outside going into Turn Seven, and he was in my blind-spot, just behind me.
“I thought I’d got sufficiently past him, though. I braked, turned in, and tried to leave enough room for him on the inside – and the next thing I knew I’d got clipped, my tyre was blown, and that was it. But, as the saying goes, I guess that’s motor racing.
“So, there are still four races to go. I’m 20 points behind Mark, and that’s a reasonable gap, but it’s not an insurmountable one. I guess I’ll just have to keep my head down and hope for the best. I’m not going to think specifically about the world championship right now, I’m just going to try to enjoy the rest of the season – and whatever happens happens. But I’ll keep fighting to the end, because it’s the only way I know.”
Martin Whitmarsh – Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes: “Jenson drove an impressively solid race to bag 12 valuable world championship points, and was unlucky to miss out on a podium finish so narrowly.
“Lewis, too, drove a great race. We reckon he has good reason to consider himself rather unlucky, since he appeared to have pulled off a sound overtaking manoeuvre only to be bumped out of the race by the car he’d passed. But I guess that’s motor racing.
“He’s disappointed – we’re all disappointed – but we’ll regroup and continue to fight for both the drivers’ world championship and the constructors’ world championship.
“There are four grands prix left to run – four grands prix left to win in fact – and both our drivers are within a win of the drivers’ world championship lead. So, yes, we’re still within striking distance of taking both the drivers’ world championship and the constructors’ world championship, and that’s what we’re still intending to do our utmost to achieve.
“That’s what Vodafone McLaren Mercedes is all about, in fact.”
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