Russia: The F1 Grand Prix Seen from the Pits

Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton – Victory

Nico Rosberg – 2nd

Toto Wolff, Executive Director: « This is a great moment for our team, but, above all, we must not forget what happened last weekend. As we celebrate this deserved achievement, we do not forget what happened to Jules in Suzuka and we will never forget the battle he is fighting at this moment. We are divided today, celebrating a moment we have worked hard for, but it will never take away the sadness of the events of the last GP.

Regarding the title, it’s incredible: I have to pinch myself because we are now part of Mercedes-Benz history. Today, our team won the first Constructors’ World Championship title, and I am proud and honored to be part of it. The foundations of this success were built by Ross [Brawn], and he played a truly important role in the team to prepare for this success. We have been able to continue this work, by making the right decisions, utilizing the right resources, and putting the team on a launch pad; today’s achievement is the result of that. Congratulations to each member of the team in the UK and Germany for this world championship.

Obviously, the focus will be on the battle for the drivers’ title, and it will remain more intense than ever during the last three races. We have a comfortable lead over Ricciardo, who is third, but nothing will change in our approach: we want Lewis and Nico to fight hard but with respect, as they have done so far. They have contributed massively to our success and deserve great credit for the constructors’ title.

– Read the drivers’ statements

Williams

Valtteri Bottas – 3rd

Felipe Massa – 11th

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance: « A great result today with 15 points, and we have increased our third position in the Constructors’ Championship by five points, which is important. Valtteri delivered a very mature performance, and it’s nice to see him in fourth position in the Drivers’ Championship. It was a disappointing weekend for Felipe, and the reliability issue yesterday really set him back. We lost at least 10 points with his car today, so we need to focus on making sure all the small details go well and maximize the points we can score because we know the car is fast and can fight with the best. »

Translate: – Read the drivers’ statements

McLaren

Jenson Button – 4th

Kevin Magnussen – 5th

Eric Boullier, Racing Director: « After a somewhat tough day yesterday, it was a pleasure and a relief to enjoy a problem-free race today. Jenson drove flawlessly all afternoon, defending well against Fernando [Alonso] at the start and then calmly holding fourth place until the checkered flag. Kevin had a brilliant start, overtaking no fewer than five cars before the end of the first lap, emerging in sixth place. Like Jenson, he drove well until the finish, putting in some impressive quick laps towards the end of his first stint to successfully overtake Fernando during their pit stops. The 22 additional points we scored in the Constructors’ World Championship this afternoon help us in our fight against Force India, and we fully intend to consolidate this advantage over the last three Grand Prix of the season. »

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Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 6th

Kimi Räikkönen – 9th

Marco Mattiacci, Team Principal: « Once again, we find ourselves facing a result far from our expectations, but today, we must congratulate Mercedes, who, after 5 years of hard work, has earned a well-deserved constructors’ title. The consecutive journey to Japan and Russia has been challenging for our team, both on and off the track. In both races, we have learned a lot, which will be useful for the future, in terms of technical improvement but also safety. I am convinced that the last three races will provide an opportunity to get the best out of the team and the car, in order to finish the season by achieving better results.

While my thoughts and everyone’s are still with Jules, today, I would like to thank Luca di Montezemolo for what was his last Grand Prix as President of Ferrari. I think we have been lucky to work with a great manager like him, and it will be exactly the same with a successor of the caliber of Sergio Marchionne.

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Red Bull

Daniel Ricciardo – 7th

Sebastian Vettel – 8th

Christian Horner, Team Principal: « First of all, congratulations to Mercedes for an excellent campaign to win the Constructors’ title; they did an incredible job this year, and after four years at Milton Keynes, the trophy will now move to Brackley. It was an uneventful race for us. Tire degradation wasn’t really a factor; we were a bit worried about Daniel’s soft tire, which is why we stopped so early, but that was about it. Dan was quite close to Alonso at the end, who seemed to have fuel consumption issues, but we just didn’t have the necessary straight-line speed to truly pose a problem. So both cars finished, a reliable race, but the event was dominated by Mercedes engines. »

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Force India

Sergio Pérez – 10th

Nico Hülkenberg – 12th

Vijay Mallya, Team Owner: « It was a tough race on a track where overtaking is almost impossible. Checo [Perez] was able to make his way through the field and showed impressive defense against Felipe Massa to secure the last point. Unfortunately, he had to give up on the idea of catching Räikkönen to save fuel; otherwise, ninth place would have been possible. Nico’s race was compromised by his position on the grid. This result complicates the battle for fifth place in the constructors’ standings a bit, but with three races still to go, including the finale and double points in Abu Dhabi, anything can still happen. »

– Read the drivers’ statements

Toro Rosso

Jean-Eric Vergne – 13th

Daniil Kvyat – 14th

Franz Tost, Team Principal: « First of all, thank you to Mr. Putin and Bernie Ecclestone for organizing a Grand Prix here in Russia. It was truly a fantastic event, in a very beautiful environment. Regarding our race, starting 5th and 9th, seeing the checkered flag in 13th and 14th is far from what we hoped for today. After about 20 laps, we had to start saving fuel, so we couldn’t use our true potential today. We lost positions simply because several other cars could easily overtake, therefore the final result is quite disappointing in truth. Now we need to analyze why it was possible that, with the same amount of fuel for everyone, we were so far behind. We need to find a solution to prevent this from happening again. »

– Read the drivers’ statements

Sauber

Esteban Gutierrez – 15th

Adrian Sutil – 16th

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: « We approached the race knowing that under normal circumstances, it would be difficult for our team. Therefore, we chose a strategy that would have been beneficial in the event of a safety car deployment. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out, so we were not in a position to fight for points. »

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Lotus

Romain Grosjean – 17th

Pastor Maldonado – 18th

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: « We used different strategies but struggled with both approaches. It’s no secret that this circuit doesn’t suit our car with the tire allocation being too hard for us to be able to do much. Pastor suffered from the lack of running yesterday while Romain received a 5-second penalty during the race, which seemed harsh. We certainly hope for better results and performances in the last three races of the season. »

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Caterham

Marcus Ericsson – 19th

Kamui Kobayashi – Retirement (brakes)

Cedrik Staudohar, Track Support Director of Renault Sport F1: « Marcus did a fantastic job attacking to stay ahead of the two Lotus drivers, but in the end, it still wasn’t enough. However, we demonstrated that our pace is improving in both the race and qualifying, which is obviously good news for the remaining races of the season. Unfortunately, Kamui was not able to finish the race, but both power units performed well and we had absolutely no issues. Hopefully, we can maintain this trend in Austin. »

– Read the statements of the drivers

Marussia

Max Chilton – Abandon (suspension)

Dave Greenwood, Chief Engineer: « As we started at the back of the grid, and given the tire characteristics this weekend, the strategy was always to minimize the first run with the mediums. However, we allowed Max to run until the 4th lap as he was making quite a bit of progress with his tires. Afterwards, we felt an issue at the first corner and had to stop the car to inspect it. Once done, we found there was indeed a problem with the right rear and decided to retire.

This is not the race result we were hoping for, but I think we can be proud of the way we reacted this weekend. We were able to draw great encouragement from the enormous support shown for Jules by the F1 community as a whole, and we are very grateful for it. We hope this helps Jules’ family in this difficult time. At some point, we will need to look ahead to the remaining races of the season, but for now, we are happy to return home.

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