Formula 1 News

2010 German GP, race: Team quotes 

Ross Brawn: “We did a reasonable job today with the car that we currently have. It was a little bit frustrating, particularly for Nico, as he was in a very strong position to get past Robert Kubica with his strategy. Unfortunately he lost some time getting tangled up with Mark Webber and ended up coming out just behind Robert. The car was more consistent in the race than in qualifying but we have to find some more performance. The team and drivers did a great job, we have good reliability and the two fastest pit stops today, so all the foundations are in place for when we develop a better car.”

Norbert Haug: “After Nico’s podium at the last race in Silverstone, coming home in eighth and ninth places was not the result that we had been looking for at one of our home races. However our grid positions were not a good base for the race, so better than P8 for Nico and P9 for Michael were not really possible. We could not make our new upgrades work to the planned extent which compromised our speed and lap times. The team worked relentlessly to get the new parts ready for this race, so two points finishes are at least a small reward for their hard work, even if they were not the positions we were hoping for. A big thank you to all of our guys for their efforts, and now we will try to get better results next weekend in Hungary.”

Stefano Domenicali: “First and foremost, I want to congratulate the team on this fantastic result, which is down to all the work undertaken with so much effort, ability and passion by everyone, both at the track and in Maranello, day after day. Already, over the past few races, we have seen that the performance level of our car has improved and finally today, we reaped the rewards. As for the Stewards’ decision, given after the race, in the interests of the sport, we have decided not to go through a procedure of appealing against it, confident that the World Council will know how to evaluate the overall facts correctly. The congratulations mentioned earlier should also extend to our drivers who drove a great race. Both Felipe and Fernando got very good starts, with the Spaniard squeezed in a very decisive fashion by Vettel and the Brazilian making the most of the space that created ahead of him. Then came a long three way fight to the chequered flag, with Felipe very quick on the softer tyres while he struggled a bit on the hards, which meant that Fernando was at first able to close right up on him and then take the lead when his team-mate decided it was best not to create a risky situation, given that right behind them, Vettel was fighting back. The situation in both championships is still complicated, but this result is further motivation for the coming races: we firmly believe in our chances of reaching the targets we had at the start of the season.”

Chris Dyer: “A great result for the team. Going home with the maximum number of points after all that has happened in the races immediately leading up to this one is enormously pleasing. This one-two is down to all the people who have done an extraordinary job over the last two months, to improve the performance of our car. I think we now have a very competitive package and we will continue to push as hard as possible on the development of the car to be even stronger in the forthcoming races.”

Mike Gascoyne: “Ultimately a very disappointing day. Jarno lost second gear and had to retire and Heikki had to retire after contact with de la Rosa. Both cars made good starts – we started Jarno on the harder tyre and Heikki on the options to split the strategies, but Jarno’s race was over before he’d really started. Heikki drove a strong race and was comfortably leading the battle of the new teams before contact forced him to retire. Despite this it was still a strong showing from us, and now we move on to Hungary.”

Kamarudin Meranun: “It’s frustrating because we’d had a good weekend, in practice and qualifying. Very unfortunate for Jarno, and Heikki was doing well so it’s disappointing to see he couldn’t finish the race, not due to a mechanical issue, but because of an incident that was out of our control. So, even though it’s sad, we’ll pull through, and we’ll do a better job in Hungary.”

Martin Whitmarsh: “Today we saw yet another impressively competent day’s work from both our drivers – and the result was 22 very valuable world championship points. In truth, in the circumstances, that’s probably about as many as we could have hoped to score today. We arrived in Germany in first place in the Constructors’ Championship and in first and second places in the drivers’ championship – and we leave Germany in exactly the same positions. So that’s extremely positive. From here on in, we’ll work as hard as we can to maintain and improve our positions at the head of both world championships. We’ll continue to develop our car in the weeks and months ahead, with a view to adding as many world championship points to the milestone total of 300 we’ve amassed this season as of today.”

Eric Boullier: “There were some very positive points from today’s race. The team did a strong job on the strategy and with the pit stops; Robert achieved the full potential of the car and showed we were the fourth quickest team this weekend; and Vitaly produced an excellent drive. He showed good pace, pushed when he needed to in order to gain positions and scored the final point. On the other hand, in terms of pure performance, we cannot be satisfied to be lapped by Ferrari. It shows that we still have a lot of work to do, but we know that we have some good upgrades on the way.”

Alan Permane: “We knew that our pace today wasn’t good enough to match the top three teams. Robert did a great job to retain his position: he managed to stay ahead of both Mercedes around the pit stops, and that is not easy to do when you are trying to defend against two cars stopping at different times. He got the best result we could have hoped for today. As for Vitaly, he put in an excellent drive: he made a good start, and then managed to overtake two cars at the stops. This meant we finished with both cars in the points for the second time this year, and we can be happy with that.”

Remi Taffin: “This was a good result when compared with Mercedes, the team we are fighting in the championship, with one car finishing ahead of them and one right behind. Robert did a strong job to finish where he started, which was the most we could hope for without any problems for the quicker cars in front. Vitaly did a super job, and showed that his pace could match Robert’s here at Hockenheim. Unfortunately, he didn’t manage to qualify as high up the grid as he could have done, but his drive today showed that we can count on him. Our engines were on their third race but we were able to push them to the limit all race without any problems. That means we will have fresh units next weekend, in addition to more progress with our development programme.”

John Booth: “It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster weekend for us, starting out with a strong Free Practice on Friday, followed by the disappointment of our problems on Saturday and then a really strong race for both Timo and Lucas. It is frustrating that having pulled it all back today in the race we lost Lucas’ car in the closing stages, but I think the whole team goes to Hungary with great anticipation for a strong weekend.”

Nick Wirth: “A very encouraging day for the team. We chose a conservative strategy of starting both cars on prime tyres and at the beginning the extra performance of the Option tyres allowed Heikki to open up a small gap which became bigger when the blue-flag-hell started. At the same time, Timo got stuck behind Bruno for a long time before he was able to get Lucas back in his sights. After Heikki finally pitted for his prime tyres, and came out behind us, it was encouraging to see us able to maintain or increase our gap despite his advantage of fresh tyres. Lucas was having another very strong race, when it looks like a very harsh exit kerb caused a rear suspension issue which sadly forced us to retire him. On the other hand, Timo’s race ended with a nice gap in the blue flags which allowed him to put in a sequence of quick laps and finish the best of the new teams. Yesterday, we were frustrated by not being able to show our performance improvements, but we have certainly done that today. In fact Timo’s race fastest lap was only 2.3 seconds down on the leader and 1.4 down on the fastest Williams, which is impressive in our first year. We’ll try and eliminate the issues that tripped us up this weekend and we go to Hungary determined to have a better race again, on a track that should suit our cars current aero characteristics.”

Sam Michael: “It was not a satisfying outcome to miss out on points today. We struggled with poor starts on both cars which dropped us a couple of positions immediately. With similar pace to all the cars around us, we then tried two quite different strategies to recover, but nothing went wrong with the other team strategies, so we couldn’t make a difference. We’ll now look to improvements for next week’s race in Budapest.”

Peter Sauber: “It was a good race and a good performance, but not the result we hoped for. Our goal now is to improve our qualifying performance in order to get the appropriate reward.”

James Key: “Ultimately it’s a bit disappointing not to finish in the points. We decided to take a split strategy, with a gamble on Pedro’s side and a standard strategy on Kamui’s. Kamui drove well in a pack of cars and was probably held up early in the race. We brought him in to protect him against the cars directly around him, but it seems the option tyres lasted quite well for more laps and this enabled Vitaly Petrov to pass him immediately after his stop. He was then not able to re-pass him again, so we missed out on the points. With Pedro we decided to go as long as we felt we could, and then put the option tyres on at the end to see what was possible. Initially it worked well as he overtook Nico Hülkenberg, but then made contact with Heikki Kovalainen and damaged his front wing. It’s a shame it didn’t work out for us today, but it’s only one week before the next race where we want to do better.”

Otmar Szafnauer: “Of course we are disappointed with the result today as we believed we could have finished much further up than we ultimately did. It was a case of cause-and-effect – one bad thing led to another. We had some issues in practice, which meant qualifying was not ideal, and in trying to be aggressive at the start we had a coming together, which in turn led to the confusion in the stops. We will draw a line under it and focus on the new developments we have coming and we can take away some positives – we ran at a strong pace on both cars when they were fighting for position and we ran reliably in the race yet again.”

Christian Horner: “Today’s race was dictated by the start. Unfortunately Sebastian didn’t get away cleanly and ended up on the right-hand side of the track. Massa got a good run on the left and we emerged from Turn one in P3 – that’s what shaped the race as far as Sebastian was concerned. With Mark, we took a calculated risk with the pit-stop. After that, he got caught up behind Rosberg, which cost him a bit of time and allowed Jenson to jump him. From there he did an excellent job in nursing an oil system issue that he managed well to the end of the race to score some important points. It was surprising what happened with the Ferraris, it looked to be a team order with the cars switching position. If so, it’s a shame for Formula One and the fans that they were deprived of a race between the two Ferrari drivers today.”

Fabrice Lom: “What a difficult race. Sebastian had a bad start, which compromised his chances, so third was the best he could achieve against the Ferraris on this track. For Mark, it was a very difficult race. We had an oil system problem which we had to manage and we had to ask a lot of him, so that the car could get to the finish. He drove very well and did everything that we requested, so a big thanks to him for that. As a team we really deserved the points we got today; now we need to find a bit more performance to fight back for victory at the next races.”

Colin Kolles: “Today, we didn’t reap the fruit of our labour. Bruno Senna had a good pace in the race until he had to do an unplanned second pit stop. A slow puncture made the second stop necessary and the chance for a better result was gone. Sakon Yamamoto stopped in lap 19 on the straight after the car suddenly stopped. The reason for this we have to investigate in order to understand what exactly happened. I have to thank the team for their work the whole weekend and for their very good pit stops today.”