Bahrain: The Grand Prix Seen from the Pits

Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton – Victory

Nico Rosberg – 2nd

Toto Wolff, Executive Director of the Team: Fantastic weekend for the team from start to finish. Dominating every session with both cars is a great achievement and we can be very proud of the combined efforts of our team in Brackley, Brixworth, and Stuttgart. The race was simply brilliant to watch, with battles all over the field.

Lewis and Nico drove with great maturity and respect for each other and for the team, while still delivering a great show. What we saw today were two drivers at the peak of their abilities, fighting fairly and cleanly for the victory. This is why we race and it’s great publicity for the sport: especially with these new rules.

With the result in Malaysia, we find ourselves in a good position in both championships. We are not under any illusions, however. We must take these moments and use them as a source of inspiration to succeed in achieving our goals.

– Read the drivers’ statements

Force India

Sergio Pérez – 3rd

Nico Hülkenberg – 5th

Vijay Mallya, Team Owner: « Today is one of the best days in our team’s history. It took a long time, but it’s very satisfying to see Sahara Force India make its return to the podium after missing it by a whisker several times in recent years. We have a great duo of drivers, and today, we saw Checo and Nico at their best as they fought for a podium place.

Without the safety car, our two-stop strategy would have been much more comfortable because we had to withstand the Red Bull attacks in the final laps. Nico did a fantastic job containing them for so long and holding onto 5th place. This gave Checo the space he needed to secure third place. So I’m extremely proud of everyone on the team and I congratulate them all for this success. /f1/actualite/17332-dimanche-hamilton-et-rosberg-offrent-une-lutte-epique-a-mercedes.html is a new opportunity and we have shown our progress in Australia, Malaysia and here. I couldn’t be happier.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Red Bull

Daniel Ricciardo – 4th

Sebastian Vettel – 6th

Christian Horner, Team Principal: A very interesting race today and a great show! I think we had it all. The drivers worked well together as a team early in the race when they were on different tire strategies and then raced hard against each other at the end of the race.

Daniel delivered a great performance and, with one more lap, he might have secured a podium finish. It was good to see them both racing against each other cleanly and fairly. Sebastian reported an issue on the straights, which we need to investigate because he couldn’t overtake anyone at the end of the straight, so there’s a lot of work to do. We collected a good total of points today and now we have two test days to try to close the gap with Mercedes.

– Read the drivers’ statements

Williams

Felipe Massa – 7th

Valtteri Bottas – 8th

Rob Smedley, Performance Director: Overall, I am extremely happy. We finished the weekend with both cars in the points, and good points. Starting 3rd and finishing 8th for Valtteri is a bit frustrating, but that’s racing, and we have to accept it. There is a lot of positives to take away, one thing we need is a bit more pace.

The team works very well together on the strategic front, and the changes over the last 12 months have been very encouraging. There is still a lot of work to be done, but I am very impressed by the quality of the people here.

– Read the drivers’ statements

Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 9th

Kimi Räikkönen – 10th

Stefano Domenicali, Team Principal: « The race concluded a weekend that proved to be as difficult as expected, even before arriving here. This circuit is particularly challenging for our car, and the technical characteristics of the Sakhir track highlighted the performance gaps. Now, we must forget this race and look forward because I don’t like seeing our drivers fight hard everywhere and then not being able to attack or defend on the straight.

We have an important testing session ahead of us now, during which I expect to see a step forward for us. The team must not give up, even if things haven’t gone as they should so far. They must continue to work in order to step up as quickly as possible.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Toro Rosso

Daniil Kvyat – 11th

Jean-Eric Vergne – Retirement

Franz Tost, Team Principal: Considering our speed during the practice sessions over the weekend, we were hoping for a much better result in the race today. Unfortunately, Jean-Eric was hit right from the start: when we analyzed the data and realized the loss of downforce due to the damage to the floor and the wing, we decided to call him in.

Regarding Daniil, he had a good race but we were not fast enough today, and we need to analyze the reasons for this in order to have a better weekend in China.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Lotus

Romain Grosjean – 12th

Pastor Maldonado – 14th

Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal: « Our two drivers stayed focused and continued to push today. It is clear that we still have a lot of potential to unlock in the car, but we were clearly more reliable here, and our pace improved as well. It was good to see both cars at the finish as this is what we need to improve our car and make it faster. »

– Read the drivers’ statements

Marussia

Max Chilton – 13th

Jules Bianchi – 16th

Claudio Albertini, Head of Customer Teams Operations at Ferrari: « Overall a good weekend, which saw Marussia reclaim the 10th place in the constructors’ championship thanks to Max’s 13th place. Even Jules managed his first finish of the season, although his race was ruined by the accident with Sutil. It was a shame because there was potential for a much better result.

From a reliability standpoint, this Grand Prix marked a step forward because we were able to enable Marussia to work continuously. Progress has also been made on the search for the best performance of the hybrid block, reflecting the increasing level of integration between the two work groups. In this regard, there will be two very useful days of testing awaiting us next week in Sakhir, where it will be possible to explore some issues and try to prepare, together, for the upcoming races.

– Read the drivers’ statements

Caterham

Kamui Kobayashi – 14th

Marcus Ericsson – Retirement (oil leak related to MGU-H)

Cedrik Staudohar, Head of Logistic Support for Renault Sport F1: Once again, both drivers did a good job with the settings and were able to keep pace with the Lotus, Sauber, and Marussia. Our package improves with each session as we better understand its strengths, and our goal is clearly to maintain this upward trend.

Unfortunately, Marcus’s race ended due to an oil leak, which was related to an issue with the MGU-H. On Kamui’s car, we had to save fuel at the end of the race while we were lapped under the safety car regime, but now, we will focus on next week’s testing and the next race in Shanghai.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

McLaren

Jenson Button – 16th (Retirement, clutch)

Kevin Magnussen – Retirement (clutch)

Eric Boullier, Racing Director: « It goes without saying that we leave Bahrain very disappointed. We didn’t have the fastest car this weekend, we know that, but if both our cars hadn’t had clutch problems at the end of the race, causing their retirement, we could at least have scored a few more points in the championship. In fact, if Jenson’s car had been reliable until the checkered flag, there was every chance that we could have fought for fifth place or potentially even third.

Certainly, aiming for the small points is not why McLaren exists – on the contrary, we exist to win – but a third, fourth, or fifth place finish would have been extremely welcome given what we want to accomplish at the start of the season far from Europe: to earn championship points while we develop the car’s performance for the start of the European season in Barcelona. In any case, we return to Woking, where we will work as hard as possible to improve our cars for Shanghai, where we hope to show much more than what we did in Sakhir tonight.

– Lire les déclarations des pilotes

Sauber

Esteban Gutierrez – Retirement (collision)

Adrian Sutil – Retirement (collision)

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: « Let’s start with the positives: we are happy that Esteban is fine after his spectacular crash. Overall, it’s a weekend to forget. We knew before this race that the power unit would limit us on this track. This was confirmed during the race.

Nevertheless, losing both cars due to accidents is very disappointing. In both cases, it was not our drivers’ fault. We will now forget this weekend and focus on the next race in China, where we hope for improvements.

– Read the drivers’ statements