For the second time since 2008, Lewis Hamilton wins his home Grand Prix. The Mercedes driver secured the victory at Silverstone ahead of fellow podium finishers Valtteri Bottas (Williams) and Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull).
Infiniti Red Bull Racing Quotes:
DANIEL RICCIARDO, Finish Position: 3rd, Start Position: 8th
“I feel good! This is the best third place I’ve ever got. I’m not normally ecstatic with a third but I really am today, obviously to redeem myself from yesterday and also the fact that I don’t think we had an awesome race car today, but we made it work. We used the cards that we had and played the game well, so I was really happy to make a one stop work. For the last two laps, I saw Jenson coming and thought I was probably going to be a bit vulnerable but we held on. The one stop wasn’t planned. We pitted quite early on the Prime because we were quite slow and it wasn’t working, so we came in for the Option and, at one point, my engineer pretty much said alright four laps to go on this tyre then let’s box. I said the pace seems OK, the tyres aren’t getting any worse and let’s try and stay out or at least think about keeping me out there and he said OK we’ll look at our options. Then, a few laps later he said do you think you can go to the end, there’s 15 or 20 laps to go, and I said, at the moment I think we can give it a crack. And so, yeah, we did and it paid off!”
SEBASTIAN VETTEL, Finish Position: 5th, Start Position: 2nd
“It felt very close with Fernando – maybe a bit too close! It got a bit silly when we both started to complain about the other going off track; I don’t think the people care too much if the car is a little bit to the left or the right. I got the message that I should respect the limits and that he was complaining, so I was doing the same thing. I’m not sure who won the list keeping. I think twice it was maybe a bit too harsh into Turn 6, but it was good to get the move at the end. I expected to get third today, the pace was there but the strategy wasn’t right. I’m looking forward to my home race in Germany; it’s always special to race there.”
CHRISTIAN HORNER, Team Principal: “After the initial delay we elected to change both drivers onto the harder tyre for the restart, which we believed would give us more strategic options. We decided to pit relatively early to try and get the undercut on the McLaren cars ahead and, whilst that was successful with both the cars, unfortunately it put us out of the range of a one stop with Sebastian. After we pitted him for the second time, he dropped behind Fernando and then had an enthralling battle with him, finally making a great move to get the pass. However it cost him a great deal of time to be able to catch the cars ahead, so fifth was the maximum we could achieve with Sebastian today. Daniel stopped slightly later for the first stop, which bought the possibility of a one stop into play and he was able to conserve his tyres extremely well to make it work. So it was great for Daniel at our second home race to get a podium today.”
THIERRY SALVI, Renault: “It’s a good result for the team today. Each race we push forward to get more and more performance from our Power Unit, and need to maintain or better this kind of result. Daniel had a different strategy to Seb and managed his tyres very well. Even though one stop was a gamble it was eventually the right choice. Seb had a difficult start and lost a couple of places and then had to work very hard to come back to the front. His overtaking move on Alonso was just fantastic. In the end I think he deserved more than fifth place but two cars in the top five is a result we’ll take at this point in the season.”
Valtteri Bottas achieved his best ever race result and a second consecutive podium in an eventful British Grand Prix today. Felipe Massa was forced to retire after getting caught in a multi-car accident at the start that red flagged the race for nearly an hour. After initially moving from 14th to ninth before the restart, Valtteri continued to make great progress with a brilliant drive through the field into an eventual second position.
In their own words:
Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering: It’s a slightly mixed weekend. It’s a great result for Valtteri and he showed incredible race craft throughout the whole race. You couldn’t ask for anything more from the driver; he changed his race around with those overtakes in the first stint. It’s really disappointing for Felipe as we clearly have a great car and could have had a double podium, but he will rebuild and has the support to bounce back. Everybody is pushing and everybody is motivated in the team, and as a result we are moving forward and that is the main aim. I am really proud of everything that we have done and a big thank you to everyone at the team here and in Grove for all the hard work.
Valtteri Bottas: We knew that this race would be good fun. We knew we had a quick car and maybe it surprised us it was so quick. The first stint we went through the field fast and that needed a bit of risk. I am so happy for the team, they have worked on race pace and it shows. We were thinking about points today not the podium, and the strategy guys did a great job. I really felt for Felipe today in his 200th race, and it was so nice of him to come to the podium with the team; I really appreciated that. We are a stronger team than we were in the first few races and it won’t be easy to stay near the top but we are doing a great job of it at the moment.
Felipe Massa: It has been a really difficult weekend. It was a bad start but after that I could catch up everyone and pass cars in the first few corners. The car felt great. Then there was the accident. Kimi came across the track and I never really had a chance to miss him, and sadly the damage was too much to continue. Luckily I turned as it could have been a worse accident. I hope Kimi is ok but it’s a weekend to forget for me personally; not the 200th Grand Prix I had planned.
Source: Williams Martini
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