Sunday: Massa back on the podium, Alonso frustrated at Ferrari

Felipe Massa – 2nd:

« It was a fantastic race! Being back on the podium after almost two years is very pleasant and I’m really thrilled. It has been two tough years for me, and sometimes a million things were going through my mind, sometimes bad ones, but finally, I can be happy! It’s an important result psychologically and for my future as well, at least I think so! It’s even better to be back on the podium here, on a track that I love and have known since the beginning of my career. Sometimes, in the toughest moments, the best things happen: the first people I want to thank are my family, my wife, and my son. This race motivates me even more for the rest of the season. I feel very sorry for Fernando, because I am convinced that today, we could have both been on the podium.

After what happened yesterday in Q2, I clearly wasn’t starting from a good position. I got off to a good start and managed to get through the chaos of the first corner unscathed, and I immediately felt that I had a good pace and managed to stay in touch with Button and Kobayashi. I passed them at the first stop thanks to a good strategy and realized that, even with the hard tires, my pace was competitive. The team did a great job and provided me with a competitive car: the only difficult moment of the weekend, for which we haven’t yet found the reason, was my botched second stint in Q2… Now, we must immediately focus on the Korean race because there are five races left, and anything is still possible.

Fernando Alonso – Retirement:

Today, we really had no luck: finishing the race like this, at the first corner, is really unfortunate. The contact with Räikkönen caused a puncture on the left rear and my race ended. Unfortunately, when you start in the middle of the pack, this can happen, because aside from the car’s performance – and ours is generally better on Sundays – the circumstances matter a lot. This was evident with Felipe’s race, who started 10th, but delivered a perfect race, fighting with the top cars. Clearly, this result has practically wiped out the advantage I had before, but if you had told me at the beginning of the season that I would be in this situation with five races to go, I would have gladly signed up for it!

Clearly, we have to work hard on the development of the car: I’m not worried, but we need to respond to counter the step forward made by our competitors. From now on, we are starting a sort of mini-championship, raced over five Grand Prix. The goal will be to score at least one more point than everyone else. What happened to us today can happen to others next time: the wheel turns and that’s what racing is about.