Italy: The Race Seen from the Pits

McLaren

Lewis Hamilton – Victory

Jenson Button – Abandon (fuel pump)

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal: « Lewis drove perfectly here at Monza and secured a fully deserved victory, the 20th of his career and the 180th for McLaren. In truth, he completely controlled the race over the 53 laps and was never really threatened.

We should have achieved the double but Jenson was denied an easy second place due to a problem with the fuel system. It’s frustrating for him and frustrating for us, but the important thing is that our car won. We have now won three Grand Prix in a row and both our drivers are at the top of their game.

Lewis has now reduced the gap in the drivers’ championship and holds second place with seven Grand Prix races still to go. It was his third victory of the season and the fifth for McLaren. The momentum is on our side, and the drivers’ world championship crown is well within our reach. In the constructors’ championship, we are also in a good position.

McLaren-Mercedes has eyes only for victory. In Singapore, in two weeks, we plan to continue on this path.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Sauber

Sergio Pérez – 2nd

Kamui Kobayashi – 9th

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal:

« What a day and what a result! I have to say it’s a bit of a surprise on a track we thought would be quite tricky for our car. But once again, we demonstrated our strong race performance. For a while, Sergio was the fastest driver on track. It’s fantastic that at the factory, they prepared such a competitive car. The race team made the right decisions for the setup and strategy, and the drivers delivered on track. These twenty points are important for our goal of climbing up the standings. »

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 3rd

Felipe Massa – 4th

Pat Fry, Technical Director: « Saying that it was an intense weekend would be a mild understatement. We encountered various reliability issues with our cars over the past few days, and today we had one with the garage equipment, which meant we were practically in the dark, as we had no telemetry, no TV images on the pit wall, and no connection with the remote garage in Maranello, at one of the crucial moments of the race, just as we were about to tackle the series of pit stops. We had some communication problems, and it was almost like going back in time to when we didn’t have all this equipment at our disposal: at one point, we even had to use the phone to communicate with Maranello and decide if it was the right time to make our stops. We managed to handle the situation, but believe me, it was no walk in the park.

Then, there was the incident where Fernando had to go off-track during his duel with Vettel: once the telemetry started working again, we noticed something was not quite right at the back, so in the last few laps, we asked him to be cautious and avoid the curbs. When the car arrived at Parc Fermé, I must say we saw that the damage was quite significant, also affecting the aerodynamics.

From a technical standpoint, this afternoon, the tire degradation was more significant than we expected during the race: we need to carefully analyze the data to understand why. We almost managed to completely compensate for the situation we were in after yesterday’s problems, but looking at the weekend as a whole, I must acknowledge that what happened in recent days should be a wake-up call for all of us: we must do our best in every area if we want to win.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Lotus

Kimi Räikkönen – 5th

Jérôme D’Ambrosio – 13th

Eric Boullier, Team Director: I don’t think we could have hoped for more this weekend. The key to a good championship position at the end of the season is to score points, even during a difficult weekend. Kimi did exactly what we expected from him today, and moving to third place in the standings is a just reward. We are still in touch with those ahead of us in both championships, and there are seven races remaining. Jérôme did an incredible job. Without his KERS issues, I’m convinced he could have finished in the points. We are optimistic that from Singapore onwards, we will be more competitive thanks to the circuit configuration and the new developments we will have, which means we will be able to score more points at each race.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Mercedes

Michael Schumacher – 6th

Nico Rosberg – 7th

Ross Brawn, Team Director: « Our two drivers delivered solid performances, both aggressive and controlled. We knew that a one-stop strategy wasn’t the right solution for us this afternoon, which is why we opted for two stops, knowing that the drivers would have to push hard to make this strategy work against the others. The disappointment today is that they really struggled with their first set of tires, perhaps due to how we used them in Q3, or maybe another factor, which we will need to analyze in any case. We lost all our time during that part of the race, but the car’s performance looked good thereafter. Nico’s fastest lap in the race shows that our performance level today was reasonable, and Michael and he were consistently among the fastest in the second half of the race. 6th and 7th places are far from perfect, but we can feel positive with this exciting race, where we used the right strategy for us and saw two great races from Michael and Nico. »

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Force India

Paul di Resta – 8th

Nico Hülkenberg – Retirement

Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Director: I think we did the maximum in a difficult race today. Despite the speed we showed yesterday, we didn’t have the pace to fight with the cars ahead of us at the start of the race. So taking all that into account, I’m happy to see Paul finish 8th and score 4 points. The one-stop strategy worked well for us and the car was strong at critical moments in the race. We had a bit of luck with some retirements, but we were in the right place to take advantage of the opportunities. Nico’s difficult weekend continued, and he suffered with his brakes all afternoon. He made some progress early in the race, but as the brake issues worsened, there was no choice but to bring the car in.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Williams

Bruno Senna – 10th

Pastor Maldonado – 11th

Mark Gillan, Chief Engineer: « Both drivers had a good start, and starting from 13th, we are happy to score a point with Bruno, who had a one-stop strategy and finished 10th. Pastor also drove well and finished just behind Bruno in 11th position with a two-stop strategy, starting from 22nd due to his 10-place grid penalty. »

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Toro Rosso

**Daniel Ricciardo** – 12th

Jean-Eric Vergne – Retirement

Franz Tost, Team Principal: A frustrating race for us at the end of a difficult home weekend. Even though it was clear we didn’t have great pace this weekend, we decided to put Daniel on a one-stop strategy in the hope of gaining places on those who would pit twice. It worked to a certain extent, as from fourteenth on the grid, he was tenth in the last lap. Unfortunately, his car suffered a fuel pump problem, which we need to investigate, that pushed him back to 12th place. As for Jean-Eric’s accident, we need to look for the causes.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Caterham

Heikki Kovalainen – 14th

Vitaly Petrov – 15th

L’team Caterham n’a pas publié de réactions du personnel dirigeant de l’équipe.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Marussia

Charles Pic – 16th

Timo Glock – 17th

John Booth, Team Principal: « Overall, I think we saw more progress today, but nonetheless, our race was not without disappointment, as we were unable to finish in the positions we had hoped for.

None of our drivers had the best start, but by the end of the first lap, we were in a position to challenge the cars directly ahead of us. The pace of both cars was initially good, but unfortunately, Timo broke a deflector on his front wing in the melee of the first lap and had to pit for a new wing, which effectively ruined his race as he was outside the optimal strategy.

Charles did a fantastic job keeping pace with our immediate competitors, and our plan for him was to make only one stop. Unfortunately, we were limited by the wear on the front tires, and although we had a good degradation rate at the rear, it forced us to switch to a two-stop strategy, and we lost a place to one of the Caterhams.

Despite our constant progress, experiences like these always disappoint us, but it comforts and encourages us to see how well the weekend went, even without running with an optimal aerodynamic package for Monza. We achieved our goal of finishing the European part of the calendar on a positive note and we are looking forward to this studious but exciting final phase of the season.

As we leave Monza, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone in the team, both at the track and at the factory, for all their hard work and commitment to improving the performance of both the car and the team. We are really thriving now and can be greatly proud of what we are achieving this season.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

HRT

Pedro de la Rosa – 18th

Narain Karthikeyan – 19th

Luis Perez-Sala, Team Director: « I am happy with the way the race went; we encountered no problems and the car proved its good reliability. We maintained a one-stop strategy that worked well and finished one lap behind the winner, which shows that our performance was good. We have closed the gap with the front of the pack on a circuit we knew would suit us.

Overall, it was a positive weekend with the debut of Ma [Qing Hua] and Pedro’s 100th Grand Prix. Now, we look forward to Singapore, where I hope we can continue to improve, with anticipation.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Red Bull

Mark Webber – Retirement

Sebastian Vettel – Retirement (alternator)

Christian Horner, Team Principal: A hugely disappointing race – our first without points since Korea 2010. It was once again an alternator failure on Sebastian’s car, and we need to look more closely with Renault to ensure this doesn’t happen again. It already cost us the victory in Valencia and now a points finish here in Monza. It’s important we fix this for the remaining seven races. For Mark, it was a tough race. Unfortunately, he lost the tires towards the end of the race, and the resulting flat spots from his spin caused the car to vibrate horribly. Rather than risk a failure, we chose to retire.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes