Canada: The Race Seen from the Stands

Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel – Winner

Mark Webber – 4th

Christian Horner, Team Principal: Winning in Montreal is fantastic for the team. We have been very close to doing so for the past two years. Winning in such a dominant manner as we did today is an extraordinary performance, despite a few breath-holding moments, especially when Seb hit the wall. He was imperious today and fully deserved the victory. It’s unfortunate for Mark that his race was compromised by Van der Garde, who shut the door on him for no reason, damaging his front wing. Despite this incident, Mark did a superb job to finish fourth.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 2nd

Felipe Massa – 8th

Stefano Domenicali, Team Principal: Today, we had to make up for our difficult day yesterday because we knew that more normal weather would allow us to show our true potential. The podium was within our reach, and we can say we achieved our goal in a race that was complicated from beginning to end due to our positions on the starting grid. Fernando delivered an absolutely extraordinary performance, especially considering that today, our competitors performed at very high levels. Felipe also demonstrated all he could do: managing to bring points home after starting from the back of the grid is the best response to those who thought he had been affected by his few off-track moments in recent days. I also want to congratulate the winners, because even though it’s easier to do the job from the front, it’s true to say that they also achieved a perfect qualifying, an area in which we need to improve. This race has also proven that two of our closest rivals, Red Bull and Mercedes, have managed to take a step forward and we are also working in this direction to be in contention until the end of the championship.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton – 3rd

Nico Rosberg – 5th

Ross Brawn, Team Principal: « For many seasons, backmarkers hadn’t played such a role in a race as they did today. They played a crucial part in the final result, but managing traffic is one of the challenges you must face in Formula 1. The car was quite competitive, but we were always concerned about tire performance in high temperatures. So we were very cautious, especially in the early laps of each stint. Lewis had a very solid race, although it’s really a shame he couldn’t maintain his second place in the last laps. But it’s not his fault. It’s up to us to find a bit more performance for our car to fight with Ferrari and Red Bull.

Nico had an honest race after a very good first stint. We need to analyze if we could have done more with the car’s performance today. We brought him in for a third pit stop as a precaution since he had a big flat spot on the front right tire and we had nothing to gain or lose on track. Overall, it’s a positive afternoon with two cars in the points again, which is important for our position in the constructors’ championship.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Toro Rosso

Jean-Eric Vergne – 6th

Daniel Ricciardo – 15th

Franz Tost, Team Principal: « Jean-Eric’s sixth place is a fantastic result for him, for the team here, and for everyone who works so hard behind the scenes in Faenza and Bicester. It’s our best result since Daniel’s 7th place in China, and it’s JEV’s best result in F1. Our car has made consistent progress over the last races, and that was confirmed yesterday. Despite the tough conditions, we placed both our cars in the top 10 on the grid, even though Daniel then lost a place. JEV did a very good job staying focused on this challenging circuit, just as he did when he finished in the points in Monaco 15 days ago, and he managed his tires very well here too, which means he secured the 6th place and handled it well all the way to the checkered flag. Daniel had a more complicated weekend, and quite quickly in today’s race, he suffered from a lack of rear grip and found the car unstable on the curbs. But he can bounce back after this disappointment, and I expect both our drivers to fight again for points at Silverstone. »

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Force India

Paul di Resta – 7th

Adrian Sutil – 10th

Robert Fernley, Deputy Director: It’s great to see both our cars in the points for our 100th Grand Prix. This brings our score to 51 points and strengthens our 5th place in the Constructors’ Championship. Paul Di Resta showed fighting spirit with remarkable driving up to 7th place with only one stop. The car had a good pace and he was very careful with tire degradation. I think nobody believed it was possible to do 56 laps on mediums, but he succeeded. Adrian’s afternoon was more eventful, but it was a real shame to receive a penalty in the very last laps. It’s something we need to review. Overall, I think we can be satisfied with the outcome of such a weekend. The car is still competitive, and we can hope for a good performance for our home Grand Prix at Silverstone at the end of the month.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Lotus

Kimi Räikkönen – 9th

Romain Grosjean – 13th

Eric Boullier, Team Principal: « It was certainly one of those days that builds character. On the positive side, Romain drove a wise and thoughtful race in the pack and should have finished in the points had he not been forced to make a second stop, which was not part of the plan. Kimi had a frustrating day, but he still scored points. We were unable to show our performance level this weekend and we will focus as much as possible heading into Silverstone. Because we are absolutely determined to get back on track in our fight for the championship. »

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

McLaren

Sergio Pérez – 11th

Jenson Button – 12th

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal « It was a difficult afternoon. We must congratulate Jenson and Checo: our two drivers had very good races, attacking when necessary and driving intelligently and cautiously to take care of their tires on long stints. They deserved to score points. Unfortunately, in hindsight, we were too cautious in our tire management. The mediums proved to be more durable than we anticipated, and we could have exploited them longer during the race. The data we accumulated over the weekend will still be interesting for moving forward. We learned some interesting things this weekend.

We will now focus on our home race at Silverstone. We will do our best to achieve a much better result in front of many British fans, who will support Vodafone McLaren Mercedes on home turf.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Williams

Valtteri Bottas – 14th

Translate: Pastor Maldonado – 16th

Mike Coughlan, Technical Director: We knew that Valtteri’s grid position was not representative of our current pace, but we hoped we could fight for a few points. Tire wear was very high with the super softs and we lost time in the first stint with both cars, which compromised our race. The medium tires performed better, allowing us to have longer second stints, but we couldn’t take advantage of it compared to the rivals around us. Pastor’s race was also compromised following a drive-through, but he then fought hard to close the gap, finishing 16th. Valtteri ran a good race without making mistakes, but in the end, the pace wasn’t in the car to allow him to finish in the top 10 today. We need to maintain our momentum after the qualifying performance to keep working hard for our home race at Silverstone.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Marussia

Jules Bianchi – 17th

Max Chilton – 19th

John Booth, Team Director: It was a difficult morning for the engineers working with less data collected than usual with the slick tires throughout the weekend. Determining our starting tire setup and overall strategy was going to be challenging. The early laps of the race did not go as planned, and we lost ground with the medium tires, which suffered from overheating. At that moment, it seemed that we might not have started the race in the best way, but the drivers and engineers did a good job of keeping their nerves and allowing for the greatest durability of the medium tires. We never expected the race to be particularly good for us, but we worked hard to improve the tire life and reaped the rewards of these efforts with our first stint of around 40 laps. This allowed us to gain good positions on the track over the Caterhams. With a total of only two stops for the team today, we knew that each one would count, and the mechanics did a fantastic job of changing the tires on both cars quickly. Then the question was to manage the wear of the super-soft tires and bring both cars to the end of the race. Overall, we can be happy to have made progress on what is traditionally a less favorable circuit for our cars. We leave Canada delighted and in good spirits to prepare for our home Grand Prix in three weeks.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Caterham

**Charles Pic** – 18th

Giedo van der Garde – Abandon

Cyril Abiteboul, Team Principal: « A very bad day for us. To say the least. From the start of the weekend, we had the feeling that it would be a tough race for a number of reasons. Firstly, in terms of aerodynamic settings, we never found the right balance between top speed and downforce with the parts we had available. We spent a lot of time on this problem, perhaps losing sight of other important areas such as tires and the very different weather conditions we had from the start of the weekend to Sunday, and the significant impact this had on tire behavior during the race. This is an area we will have to investigate thoroughly because our direct competitors chose a different strategy, which clearly gave them an advantage.

The severe tire degradation on Giedo’s car led to him receiving blue flags very early in the race, which contributed to the unfortunate events we never want to see as a team. Today’s race in Canada ended the positive trend we’ve been experiencing since Bahrain, and we need to turn that around for Silverstone and fight there. We’ll have new parts for the British Grand Prix and we’re going to conduct a new aerodynamic test next week. Hopefully, this will give us the opportunity to come back.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Sauber

Esteban Gutiérrez – 20th

Nico Hülkenberg – Retirement

Tom McCullough, Track Engineering Chief: « The characteristics of the circuit were not favorable for our car. In the end, it’s a double retirement, which is really disappointing. From a strategy standpoint, we attempted a one-stop race for Esteban and a two-stop for Nico, which was the basic strategy. But in the end, the tire degradation was so significant for Esteban that we switched late to a two-stop strategy, and unfortunately, there was this incident at the exit of the pits. Let’s now look towards Silverstone, which is a circuit that should suit us better. We need to ensure we get the maximum out of the car. »

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes