Spain: The F1 Grand Prix Viewed from the Pit Lane

Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton – Victory

Nico Rosberg – 2nd

Paddy Lowe, Executive Director (Technical): « Both cars got off to a great start and navigated the first corner cleanly without incident. From there, it was an incredibly close race between the two drivers, with an hour and a half of constant work between them and their engineers to try to find a possible advantage. It was superb to watch both sides working so well in the garage to bring the best to their driver. Lewis and Nico both delivered great performances, and seeing a gap of 0.6 seconds after 66 laps of flat-out racing says it all. I would like to thank the entire team in Brackley, Brixworth, and Stuttgart for the enormous work done to create such a competitive car for this very difficult and pivotal race of the season. We are now looking forward to Monaco which presents very different challenges for us to overcome. »

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Red Bull

Daniel Ricciardo – 3rd

Sebastian Vettel – 4th

Christian Horner, Team Principal: « A great performance today. Daniel truly deserves his first official podium after having a flawless weekend. Sebastian, after a nightmare start this weekend by losing all of Friday, experiencing a gearbox issue on Saturday, and a new 5-place penalty, delivered a fantastic comeback. With the help of a very good strategy and great teamwork, including the fastest stop of the day, Sebastian climbed back up to 4th position and set the fastest lap. It was a positive race. »

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Williams

Valtteri Bottas – 5th

Felipe Massa – 13th

Rob Smedley, Head of Performance: « The car was the third fastest yesterday, as today, so overall we are happy to be there. We came with a package of improvements and it clearly worked. Valtteri did a good job making the two-stop strategy work. We tried a different strategy with Felipe to try to free him up, but unfortunately, it didn’t work, so we need to look at every aspect to ensure we are in the best shape with Felipe for Monaco. »

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Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 6th

Kimi Räikkönen – 7th

Pat Fry, Chassis Director: This weekend, which was difficult for the team and the drivers, ended with an uneventful race during which we lacked the pace to gain places from our starting positions on the grid. Considering the difficulty of overtaking on this circuit, the start could have made a difference, but the positions remained more or less the same.

If fuel consumption wasn’t too problematic, tire degradation marked the race from start to finish. Apart from the Mercedes, the lap times of the teams were very close, which meant that the chances of continuing or performing an undercut, as well as traffic management, took precedence over strategic choices. The gap with the leaders is really not a surprise and will not discourage us from doing the work we need to improve the car.

Now, we will try to make the most of the two days of testing this week in Montmelo to progress with the development of the F14-T. The goal is to provide our drivers with a more competitive package.

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Lotus

Romain Grosjean – 8th

Pastor Maldonado – 15th

Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal: « We are very happy for the team and for Romain to have scored our first points. It has truly been a long road to get to this place. Not everything is good because we expected to finish higher. We still had some issues with the power unit, so we need to continue working with Renault to ensure we can fight for as many points as possible. We have two days of testing coming up, and our goal is to improve further in performance and reliability. »

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Force India

Sergio Pérez – 9th

Nico Hülkenberg – 10th

Vijay Mallya, Team Director: « There were a few surprises during the race this afternoon, and our final result with 9th and 10th places is a fair reflection of the pace shown this weekend. As I said yesterday, this circuit has never played to our advantage, yet we still managed to get both our cars into the points. This means we’ve scored points in every race so far this year, maintaining our momentum in the championship. Like everyone, we suffered from very high degradation, and it was difficult to make the right calls on when to pit. We feel we were quite aggressive with both cars’ strategies, but in hindsight, we probably could have pushed the limits even further. »

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McLaren

Jenson Button – 11th

Kevin Magnussen – 12th

Eric Boullier, Race Director: « Yesterday, our qualification showed that we had made a small step forward in terms of performance. Today, we were unable to translate that small step into points, mainly due to Jenson losing a few places on the first lap and Kevin starting from 14th place through no fault of his own. After driving very well, both under difficult circumstances, Kevin eventually crossed the line less than a second behind Jenson. Next week, Jenson and Stoffel [Vandoorne] will conduct a two-day test for us here in Barcelona, during which we hope to consolidate this small step forward. We know that our journey towards better competitiveness will not be short, but it is already clear that the trend is in the right direction. »

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Toro Rosso

Daniil Kvyat – 14th

Jean-Eric Vergne – Abandon (exhausts)

Franz Tost, Team Principal: « We fought throughout the weekend here in Barcelona without being able to reach the pace we expected. In both qualifying and the race, we couldn’t achieve the necessary speed to make it into Q3 and finish in the points today with Daniil. As for Jean-Eric, unfortunately, we had to call him in shortly after his first pit stop due to a problem in the exhaust system. Now, we will work very hard to prepare the car for a better performance in Monaco. »

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Sauber

**Esteban Gutierrez** – 16th

Adrian Sutil – 17th

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: « This result is obviously not satisfactory. We arrived in Barcelona with a development package, and we have seen that the gap with our direct competitors is smaller than before. Now, it’s a matter of optimizing this package. There are still certain points that are not as good as they should be. First and foremost, we need to have a better understanding of the best way to use the tires. »

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Marussia

Jules Bianchi – 18th

Max Chilton – 19th

John Booth, Team Principal: Overall a good race for the team today. We had planned a two-stop strategy and after a good start from both cars, Jules aimed to widen the gap with the cars behind. Unfortunately, Max got stuck behind Kobayashi in the first stint, and to try to overtake him, we decided to attempt a three-stop strategy. In the end, the two-stop strategy worked well, and his pace at the end on the hard tires was very good. It was clear, however, that we needed a few more tenths to stay at the back of the midfield pack. The three-stop approach for Max wasn’t as effective as the two-stop, but he managed to stay ahead of Kobayashi. Unfortunately, he finished behind Ericsson on one of his two middle stints, which caused a gap with Jules larger than it should have been.

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Caterham

Marcus Ericsson – 20th

Kamui Kobayashi – Retired (brakes)

Cedrik Staudohar, Track Support Manager of Renault F1: We had a very clean race on the power unit side and we couldn’t have done much more today. It was good to see Kamui and Marcus fighting with the other cars at certain times but ultimately the car needs more pace to do it on a regular basis. Some improvements are planned on our side for Monaco to help with traction and energy management and we will work with the team to extract the maximum from the package as it evolves.

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