Fahrerstimmen – Tag 3

Ich bin absolut zufrieden. Es war ein großartiges Rennen und sehr schön, vom Anfang bis zum Ende ein sauberes Wochenende zu erleben. Das Team hat großartig gearbeitet. Wir hatten erwartet, dass es gegen Ferrari eng werden würde, weil sie auf ihren Long Runs gut mit den Reifen umgegangen waren. Mein Ziel war, mein eigenes Rennen zu fahren und so gut ich konnte auf die Reifen zu achten. Ich fuhr so hart ich konnte innerhalb des Machbaren mit diesen Reifen und versuchte, die Stints auf den Option-Reifen so lange wie möglich auszudehnen. Ich kam nie in Gefahr durch Nico, aber ich habe ihn nicht absichtlich eingebremst. Vor der zweiten Boxenstopprunde konnte ich einige schnelle Runden fahren, um den Vorsprung damit auszubauen. Das hat mir richtig Spaß gemacht. Danach ging es darum, den Prime-Reifen bis ins Ziel zu bringen. Insgesamt möchte ich mich beim Team für ein rundum gelungenes Wochenende bedanken. Wir haben das Auto so eingestellt, wie ich es haben wollte - das hat mir bei der heutigen Leistung geholfen. Es ist ein großartiges Gefühl, wieder vor all diesen fantastischen Fans in China gewonnen zu haben. Ihre Unterstützung war das gesamte Wochenende über unglaublich. ‘Xiexie’ an sie alle!

Es war super, die Ferrari zu schlagen. Das Team hat seit Malaysia großartige Arbeit geleistet. Dennoch bin ich heute ein wenig enttäuscht, weil ich gesehen habe, was für einen Unterschied vier Hundertstelsekunden Abstand zu Lewis im Qualifying ausmachen können. Lewis achtete im Mittelstint sehr auf seine Reifen. Dadurch entstand für mich ein Risiko mit Vettel direkt hinter mir. Das Team passte sich daran an und holte mich bei meinem zweiten Stopp früher herein. So blieb ich vor dem Ferrari, der bei seinem Boxenstopp versuchte, mich durch einen Undercut auf neuen Reifen zu überholen. Das ging für mich auf. Danach hatte ich jedoch einen langen letzten Stint vor mir und die Reifen begannen in den letzten Runden nachzulassen. Ich bin überzeugt, dass wir uns zusammensetzen und alles besprechen werden. Letztlich liegt es aber an mir, die Situation zu ändern. Ich muss nur am Samstag bessere Arbeit abliefern.

All in all we can be really happy. It is only race three and the steps we have made so far are really impressive. Third and fourth place for the Team, makes me really happy, I would have obviously loved to put more pressure on Mercedes: after the first and second stop we were able to be right there, but in the last stint they were able to pull away quite a lot. Basically we are closer than four weeks ago, which is positive, but there is still a lot to do. But what’s very positive is also the fact that we stayed ahead of all the other Teams. Second for us was not really possible today, you have to accept that our opponents were quick. For Bahrain, we hope to get again a bit closer. We have a strong car no matter which condition, that is the feeling

Considering that my position on the starting grid today was not ideal, fourth place is a good result. My start was ok, I had quite a good jump off the line, and at the first corner I decided to go inside and at the end of the corner I was in the right place and managed to take the Williams under braking – my car is really good at that – and managed to pass them. The car was quite good today; the first set of tyres was a bit tricky, but I think it was the same for everybody, and then the next two sets were ok. Towards the end of the race I was catching up, I knew I had the speed and I thought I still had good tyres. I could still have had a chance to try and fight for podium but the safety car came in and we know we cannot change that. Today we got close to the podium, from the next race on we have to have a better weekend, doing everything right in qualifying, and we’ll do our best. As a team we scored the maximum today, we know we are behind Mercedes, but we have to be happy with the result. From tomorrow on we have to make another step to be able to challenge them every weekend; we’ll keep working hard as we have done since last year. We trust the way the team is working: now we have to be patient

We had a good race today and I managed to get the most out of the car. The team performed very well but we just don’t have the raw speed to catch the cars in front. I will work on my start as that is really the only thing that went wrong for us. We have scored the most amount of points available to us today.

It was a lonely race for me today. I struggled for race pace throughout, but as a team we got the best result we could have achieved. I would have liked to have kept Kimi behind for longer after getting in front of him at the start, but he made a good move on me to retake the position. There is quite a bit of work to do to catch the cars ahead, but it's only race three, so there is plenty of time.

It's the best we could do today and it's satisfying to have achieved the team's first points of the season. I'm proud of everyone at Enstone and at the track. It wasn't an easy circuit for us, with a lot of front limited corners that we don't particularly like, but we had a strong start, and most of the stints were good too. We've made a good job improving the car race after race and it's great to finally score points. The next race could be promising too!

Ein toller Tag für uns – beide Autos haben das Rennen in den Punkten beendet. Ich freue mich sehr für das gesamte Team. Es war kein leichtes Rennen, da wir es nicht geschafft haben Lotus und Toro Rosso hinter uns zu halten, deren Rundenzeiten schneller waren als unsere. Ich denke, alles aus dem Auto und unserer Strategie herausgeholt zu haben. Wir können mit diesem Resultat zufrieden sein.

Some positives are that we learned a few areas where we need to improve and the smart guys in the team can find a solution. I had a little battle with Daniil, I don't know if I was optimistic in trying to get past, we were on different race strategies but we'll sort it out in the debrief. We underachieved today, but hopefully we find something in the next few days and have a better result in Bahrain.

Das ist erneut ein grossartiges Ergebnis für das gesamte Team. Unser Ziel war es, das Rennen mit beiden Autos in den Punkterängen zu beenden, was wir geschafft haben. Es war ein schwieriges Rennen mit einigen spannenden Zweikämpfen. Ich hatte allerdings gehofft, dass unsere Rundenzeiten etwas besser sein würden, aber ich hatte Schwierigkeiten die Vorderreifen zum Arbeiten zu bringen. Dadurch gelang es mir nicht, schnellere Rundenzeiten zu fahren. Alles in allem war es aber ein gutes Rennen. Ich freue mich, erneut gepunktet zu haben.

We raced very hard today, but in the end it wasn’t quite enough to come away with some points. With the strategy we looked at all the opportunities and switched to three stops quite early in the race, which was the right decision. I was able to push hard all the time with the aggressive strategy and fight with the cars ahead of me. In the final part of the race I was catching Ericsson, but he was just too far ahead to make up the ground. We are still not where we want to be in terms of competitiveness, but there are definitely some positives to take because we made an improvement compared to our performance in Malaysia.

“This wasn’t the easiest race for us. We weren’t very competitive at the beginning, then we had a few issues with the aero behaviour of the car, they slowed me down in the middle stint, but I was able to push a bit harder on the soft tyre at the end of the race. “We still need to learn a lot more about this car in order to extract its maximum, but an afternoon like today was extremely useful for us as it enabled us to better understand the car. “It was a useful race for me too: my longest stint during winter testing was 12 laps; in Malaysia, I did 22; and here I completed the race, so this is a step forward. “Hopefully, we can improve again for Bahrain.”

It was a very difficult race for us today. We started on Prime tyres, but the track was very green and dirty at the beginning, so we immediately suffered a considerable lack of grip. While I was really pushing hard to be on top of Force India for the first stint, unfortunately I made a mistake. It's a real shame! From then on, as soon as we put the Soft tyres on, the balance came back and I was feeling comfortable with the car. Unfortunately we had an issue with the gearbox, which we still have to investigate, which made us lose more time. Without that problem I think we could've been in contention for points.

“Today wasn’t too bad – we’re still fighting at the back of the field, which is a shame, but it’s positive to see that we’re progressing. “My middle stint on the Option tyre wasn’t too bad – I don’t think our pace was too bad at all on the softer tyre – but the Prime was a bit trickier in those closing laps. A lot of that was due to all the blue flags and traffic I encountered – they meant the tyre temperatures dropped off quite a bit through the stint. It wasn’t easy. “Regarding the collision with Pastor, I thought there was room on the inside – a collision is something you never want to see happen. It was just a misjudgment, I guess. “Still, we go to Bahrain hoping for more progress, although the circuit configuration doesn’t suit us, so heading to Europe will hopefully work out a little bit better for the team. “We need to improve at every race because we’re quite a way back.”

A great race for me and the team and one which shows how far we've come in a very short space of time. Obviously it feels really good for me to be racing again and to finish the race with both cars is so important for us at this stage of our development. We always knew that when we sorted out the challenges we'd have a reliable car. I didn't get the best of starts but those sorts of issues are easily resolved and I'm sure we'll see a lot more progress over the next few races.

I'm really pleased that we've completed another race and this time with both cars, steps which are really important for the team. Looking back across the whole weekend we've made a lot of progress since Malaysia and the pace is improving all the time from session to session. I hope we can continue this progress in Bahrain next weekend.

It's a disappointing way to end what was being a great race! To be running in the points positions but then have to stop the car so close to the end of the race is very frustrating. I'm obviously not happy with the final result but as a team we did the best job possible today. The car was performing well and even though we are lacking some top speed, the braking and the downforce we have on the car is really good and that helped me to complete some good overtakes, which I enjoyed a lot.

This weekend has been a bit tricky, and not the happy ending we would have liked. I saw a lot of smoke coming from the rear of my car, I am not sure what happened but the team are investigating. It's not an easy situation, but we have to stay strong, I am with the team and we will all work on it together, and we'll keep our heads high heading into Bahrain.

It is disappointing to end the race early, especially considering our previous record of solid reliability. It would have been interesting to see how our race would have developed because I made some good progress on the opening lap when I went around the outside of a few cars and then got a good run at Kvyat, which put me up in P12. We had the pace to keep up with the Toro Rossos and Saubers, so it was positive to see our pace being more competitive. It is still too early to say what caused my retirement: the engineers are looking at the issue and still investigating. All we know at this stage is that I lost drive and had to park the car.

I made a great start and we were running strongly early on however later I had a braking issue which made it harder to battle. We also have to understand why the brakes locked-up so easily coming into the pits. We lost a lot of time here and it compromised the rest of my race. It was a fantastic battle with Jenson and we were passing each other very cleanly; a good, fun, exciting battle. Unfortunately, it looks like he got his braking point wrong and went into the back of me. This can easily happen when you're fighting for position, braking off-line and using DRS, so it's just one of those things. Certainly our race pace is good, if we qualify a little higher we should be set for a very good time in Bahrain.