Kimi, taking second place at the start was obviously key to your strategy.
Kimi Raikkonen: Yeah, finally the start worked for me and helped a lot. I think the car was good all the time, but not exactly perfect but I was very happy with the car. I just tried to push and keep up with Felipe. I knew that he was going to stop a bit later, so just before the first stop I had quite a bit of traffic but then at the second stop I managed to get in front of him. It was a good day for me and the team.
You had a very good run when Felipe came in for his second stop, very quick on the circuit at that point.
KR: Yeah, we needed to be. I was a bit further away from him than I really wanted to be. But that's racing. I couldn't really stay close enough but it worked out perfectly at the end, so I couldn't ask for more. Of course, you would rather start from the front, it makes your life easier, but we knew that we should be OK in the race. It all really depends what happened at the start and we had a pretty good start this time.
Your first win since Melbourne at the start of the season. Talk us through the last couple of months and what this win means to you now
KR: It's nice. I think we had a bit of a hard time but I kind of expected to have a bit of a difficult time so OK, people always think that you've lost it when you don't have a good result but we just worked hard and try to get it right and I think we can still improve and we're still not where we want to be. But we are definitely much happier with the car since the last test. In the last races we just couldn't get it together. I think it seems to have good speed now so we must keep it up in the next races.
Felipe, it was obviously very close. It looked like you didn't get the best of the traffic when it mattered most to you today.
Felipe Massa: Yeah, for sure I lost the race today because of the traffic, definitely, because in the first stint I was supposed to be more than four seconds in front of Kimi, and it worked perfectly because the track was free, and I was 4.8s ahead or something. And then I came out in front of him again and then he had three laps more than me in the second stint which is supposed to be the same, you're supposed to have more than four seconds in front. But I was so disappointed with the traffic in the second stint. I lost too much time. Even when you are not very close to the car in front, you lose so much downforce that you cannot follow the car and you just lose speed and that was the biggest problem I had today. Unfortunately, I lost the victory because of that, because the car was great during the whole runs. Whenever I was alone I was doing very very quick laps, so it was a shame. But anyway, it's very good for the team. I'm very happy to do the first one-two in the championship and also looking at McLaren, that they are still quite a bit in front, it is good to have a weekend like that.
Taking you up on that point about the traffic, do you mean specific aspects of other drivers' behaviour, or do you mean in general, just the loss of downforce?
FM: Well, the people I had were maybe three or four cars in front of me and they were fighting but I was the leader and sometimes you make the strategy not counting the traffic and the traffic can change everything on your strategy. So the first stint worked perfectly, but the second stint didn't work. As long as I passed the traffic, I was opening a normal gap compared to Kimi that I was supposed to open. In the first stint it worked, in the second stint it was supposed to work but it didn't work.
Lewis, another first for you today: you actually got passed in a race – off the line, that is. It looks as if you have about the same amount of fuel as Fernando but switching strategy, three stops today.
Lewis Hamilton: Yeah, I didn't get off to the best start, I don't really know what happened, but all I saw was Kimi come flying past, so he obviously got a good start. I just had to try and stay as close as possible and I think I had good pace at the beginning so I was slightly quicker than Kimi and I thought I had to try my hardest to get past but like Felipe says, you get to a certain distance and you just lose downforce and unless you're much much quicker, seconds quicker, you won't get past. So I stuck in there for as long as I could and then we opted for a three stop strategy which I think still worked out quite well. It was obviously quite close with Robert Kubica on the exit of – I think – my last pit stop. I don't know if he was fourth or not, but I heard I was racing him, so I had to make sure I got past him. But overall I'm happy again for the team. I think we still got good points, I've got good points for the championship which is key, and obviously we need to keep on pushing. The Ferraris were very quick this weekend but I still think we can take it to them in the next race.
How do you think the car will go at the next race, at Silverstone. How quick will the McLaren be versus the Ferrari?
LH: I still think that we will be extremely competitive there. I know that the team is working very very hard back at the factory to keep on improving. I know when we go to the next race we will be even quicker. I'm feeling fairly confident. As long as we continue with the reliability that we have, the consistency, then I don't see why we won't be able to fight for the win. I'm looking forward to Silverstone as it's my home race. It will be an extra buzz for me, and I think it will be a good weekend.
Kimi, your feelings going to Silverstone?
KR: I think we had a very good test there so hopefully we get the parts that we tried there for the race. We were not able to get all of them here so that should help us. Our car seems to work well there. Testing is always testing but I think we are pretty confident that we're going to have good speed there also. You never know; the weather there can be very tricky but we go there this weekend and we try to do the best and hopefully can try to win.
Press Conference
