Nico Rosberg
Wow, what a weekend! I am so happy with how everything is working out at the moment. The start was
definitely the key to my win – and that was a really great moment, as it was an area that we put a lot effort
into before the race. Leading into Turn One was a relief, to be honest, as I could see in my mirrors that it was
very busy behind me. But from then on I was able to control the pace and take the win. Strategy-wise we had
to play it safe. It maybe wasn’t the quickest option – but we had to cover the risk of a safety car. It was an
almost perfect weekend for me – only qualifying could have been a fraction better. What a great start to the
season – a big thank you to the guys and girls at the factories for this amazing car! Now I look forward to
China, where I won my first ever Grand Prix, so I have plenty of positive energy heading there.
Lewis Hamilton
I didn’t get a good start today – but it actually wasn’t as bad as the last one. They were completely different
incidents – both painful, but this one probably more so! In Melbourne I had loads of wheel spin but this time I
just didn’t get away as well as I needed to and that was down to me. If you start on pole and go backwards it
quickly becomes a domino effect. It’s so easy to get clipped from there and unfortunately that’s what
happened at Turn One. Nonetheless, I managed to climb back up there and at least get some points, so
again it was good damage limitation. I could easily have not finished the race, so I’m glad it wasn’t more
points dropped in the end. I had so much damage on the car that I couldn’t keep up with Kimi. I was fighting
hard and did what I could with it – but it wasn’t quite enough to catch him, so in the end I had to just save the
tyres in case of a safety car. A big thank you to all the fans who came out this weekend. I’ve got some
incredible support here. I’ve been so well taken care of, so I look forward to coming back next year. Now I’ve
got to wait until China for the next battle – but it’s a track that has been good to me for many years, so
hopefully things will turn around a bit for me there.
Toto Wolff, Head of Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
Congratulations to Nico first of all. He’s on a roll right now, with five race wins in a row, and he didn’t put a foot
wrong today – a clean start, clean turn one and then the race was his to control. He was quick when he
needed to be, without taking any unnecessary risks, and deserved another great win. On Lewis’ side, like in
Melbourne he found himself P7 on the first lap – and, again, he used the fighting spirit we all know to get back
to the podium. He got a poor getaway again – and we saw up and down the field that the new rules are
causing much more variability in the starts, which was the intention. After that, he got hit by Bottas at the first
corner in a pretty over-optimistic move, which damaged the car pretty badly on the front wing and the floor – it
cost a good chunk of overall performance. From then on, it was about damage limitation and trying to get
back through the field, even with a damaged car; Lewis did a great job at that. But it was clear in the middle of
the race that he didn’t have the pace to challenge Raikkonen, so then we just played it safe and brought
everything home. We’re just two rounds into a season of 21 races, so there are no trends to find in the results
right now; as a team, we’re pleased to have made this strong start to the year, and that we are taking our
opportunities when they come. But it’s clear that we would have seen a different race today if Sebastian had
not been forced to retire before the start. So we will keep our feet on the ground and keep pushing for the next
race in China.
Paddy Lowe, Executive Director (Technical)
An eventful start to the race, with Sebastian dropping out and then the first corner incident for Lewis. There
was a lot of damage to the car – particularly to the floor but also to the front wing – so we were very relieved to
see that it still had enough performance to allow Lewis to start fighting back through the pack. We debated
changing the front wing at the first stop but eventually decided that there was not sufficient damage to warrant
the time loss in the box. Meanwhile, Nico made a strong start and had a good buffer after Kimi also lost out at
Turn One, so it was a fairly straightforward race for him with no issues to report. For Lewis, he battled his way
up to Kimi and we decided to try something different to get him past by taking the medium tyre and targeting
a two stop strategy. Initially this looked promising, as he was gaining on Kimi despite running a slower
compound after the first stops. However, it soon became apparent that the medium was degrading as badly
as the soft, so that strategy unfortunately began to unwind quite quickly. We therefore converted him back to
a three stop – but of course Ferrari shadowed and we then had to cover that in turn with Nico. At that point,
with all three cars on the same tyres, we had to just hold position to the end. It was great for Nico to get the
win and great damage limitation on Lewis’ side to recover good points – if a big shame for him that he couldn’t
convert his amazing pole position into a win, through no fault of his own.
Kimi Raikkonen
“The start was not ideal, but luckily we did not lose too many places in the first lap. After that I tried to
recover, and was able to overtake some cars and make the best out of it. We managed to do good pit-stops
with the right tire choices and the speed was quite good, too. In the end we were catching up a bit on the
Mercedes in front, but I never got close enough to try and pass Nico. Considering what happened in the first
lap it’s a pretty ok result, it’s not what we want but we keep working and improving things. We are going in
the right direction, but obviously it’s not ideal for the team to have only one car finishing the race. In this sport
we always push to the limits and sometimes things can go wrong, this is not what we want but it’s part of
racing. We know that the car is pretty good but we have certain things to improve and still some work to be
done.”
Sebastian Vettel
“It was a very short race today, I didn’t even break a drop of sweat… We had a failure, I saw a lot of smoke
from behind and I lost power so we decided to stop the car. For sure it is frustrating, because in the end I am
here to race. The problem came as a surprise, both for me and the whole team, as I was approaching Turn
Eleven. Now we need to understand exactly the problem and learn from it. It is not ideal and we can’t be
proud of it. But we had a good preparation over the winter, we are pushing very hard and we know that we can
still improve. We still have a lot of races ahead of us, this is going to be a long year so even if today it was not
good because I couldn’t score any point, we’ll make sure that the next race goes a lot better…
Congratulations to Kimi. It was important that during the race we supported him on both sides of the garage.”
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