United States: The Race Viewed from the Pits

Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel – 1st

Mark Webber – 3rd

Christian Horner, Team Principal: An incredible team performance today. Sebastian setting a new record for consecutive wins in a season is a fantastic achievement, and being joined on the podium by Mark, who tried everything in the last laps and provided the team with a fantastic podium at the United States Grand Prix. Achieving this result in front of so many partners and team supporters, as well as achieving the team’s best pit stop with Mark’s stop, concluded a magnificent weekend for the entire team.

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Lotus

Romain Grosjean – 2nd

Heikki Kovalainen – 14th

Eric Boullier, Team Principal: « It was another positive weekend for the team. We scored more points than our championship rivals thanks to Romain [Grosjean]’s perfect driving. It really was his best Grand Prix and another excellent performance to add to his current good form. The only way to beat the Red Bulls was for Romain to make a good start, and that’s exactly what he did. It’s disappointing that Heikki [Kovalainen] couldn’t convert his 8th place on the grid into points at the finish, but we had problems with his front wing and KERS, and we will need to analyze this before Brazil. »

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Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton – 4th

Nico Rosberg – 9th

Ross Brawn, team principal: It was a rather good race this afternoon with the car we had today. It was clearly a controlled race more than a race where our drivers could attack fully. Lewis [Hamilton] had a fantastic start but then it became clear that trying to hold off Webber wasn’t going to help us in our pursuit of a one-stop strategy, which was essential. The car wasn’t too bad and both our drivers had a good balance, considering the very different conditions from yesterday. Lewis and Nico [Rosberg] did an excellent job managing the tires in the race, and their hard sets were close to the end of their life when they crossed the line, which was exactly what was needed. They drove in a very controlled manner today, allowing us to consolidate our second place in the Constructors’ Championship. Now, it’s time to think about São Paulo to finish the job.

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Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 5th

Felipe Massa – 12th

Stefano Domenicali, Team Principal: This weekend ended with a result that cannot be seen as satisfactory. The race lacked major incidents and the outcome was decided on the first lap. Once again, the result of the qualifying conditioned our performance and on this occasion, the regrets are even greater. The gap to 5th place yesterday was minimal and if we had started on the clean side of the track, maybe we could have had a different race. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen that way and now we have to grit our teeth until the end in Brazil, trying to do our best to maximize the car’s potential, because I expect the team to react in Interlagos. Today’s result rewards Fernando [Alonso]’s incredible consistency, second on three occasions in these past four years [in the drivers’ championship /f1/actualite/16602-dimanche-le-grand-8-pour-sebastian-vettel-et-red-bull.html, ed.], a small reward against the Red Bull juggernaut. Thanks to his 5th place, the battle for second place in the constructors’ championship is still open, even though we will have to keep an eye on Lotus, who, although being 4th, seem to be, in every way, the second force on the grid. Felipe couldn’t do much more today but I am convinced that in Brazil, he will be competitive again for what will be his last race in red and a weekend full of emotions for the whole team.

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Sauber

**Nico Hülkenberg** – 6th

Esteban Gutiérrez – 13th

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: « We are very happy with this solid result for the team. We didn’t have any issues with either car during the race, and the team performed well. Once again, Nico [Hülkenberg] had a great race, and we’ll see if we could have done something different to gain another position. With Esteban [Gutiérrez], we opted for an unusual strategy because of the difficulty posed by his starting position. We hoped he could overtake a few cars at the end of the race. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out. However, we can still be pleased with his performance. »

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McLaren

Sergio Pérez – 7th

Jenson Button – 10th

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal:« Checo [Sergio Pérez] and Jenson [Button] both drove very well in demanding conditions this afternoon, hindered in their progress by a pit stop strategy that didn’t quite work out for either and a circuit whose layout always makes overtaking extremely difficult. We decided to put both our drivers on a one-stop strategy early in the race, to allow them to overtake their closest rivals. But, as I said, we didn’t manage to gain any advantage by doing so.

That being said, Checo had a solid and controlled race to finish 7th, which is the position he started from, showing how difficult it was to overtake here today. Jenson started 15th due to his problems in qualifying yesterday. But then he had an excellent race, handling a car with a seriously damaged left front wing following contact with another car on the first lap. Despite the understeer handicap, Jenson was able to achieve impressive lap times. By attacking throughout the race, he managed to enter the points standings in 10th place by expertly managing his tires and earning a well-deserved point thanks to a clean but spectacular maneuver on Daniel [Ricciardo] in the penultimate lap of the race.

This maneuver was a fitting end to a frustrating weekend for Jenson, but I hope it consoles him to know that today he has equaled the record of our old friend David [Coulthard] of 246 Grand Prix starts by a British driver. He will set a new record of 247 Grand Prix starts by a British driver next weekend in Brazil.

Speaking of Brazil, which will be the last Grand Prix of a very demanding 19-race calendar, we are going to São Paulo as determined as ever to score as many points as possible in order to consolidate our 5th place in the Constructors’ Championship. No, finishing 5th is not McLaren’s goal, but I want to say a big thank you to our mechanics in particular, who have worked extremely hard to ensure our reliability is top-notch, even if our competitiveness was not.

Once again, I would like to pay tribute to the Circuit of the Americas and everyone who works there. Undoubtedly, F1 has found its spiritual home in the United States, and I believe I can speak on behalf of all McLaren when I say that we love visiting Austin and we are already looking forward to coming back here next year, where we will try to fight higher in the field than we did today.

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Williams

Valtteri Bottas – 8th

Pastor Maldonado – 17th place

Xevi Pujolar, Chief Race Engineer: « It was a good start for both our cars, but we quickly saw that Pastor [Maldonado] had damage to his front wing following his contact with Sutil on the first lap. We had planned one-stop races for both drivers, but due to the damage, we brought Pastor in much earlier to switch him to hards. With a higher track temperature today, we were cautious at first to manage the tires, but the data collected early with Pastor showed that our pace and consistency were good. After a good start, Valtteri [Bottas] had a solid race, fighting when necessary and making a nice overtake on Gutiérrez for 8th place. We managed the gap with Rosberg behind us, and Valtteri was able to push in the final laps to ensure he kept his position. It’s a great result for him to score his first points in Formula 1, and a well-deserved end to the weekend for the whole team. Even though he finished 17th, Pastor also put in a good race, and if he hadn’t had to make that premature stop, there was potential for both our cars to be in the points today. It was good progress for us here in Austin, and now we hope to carry the momentum to finish the season strong in Brazil. »

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Toro Rosso

Daniel Ricciardo – 11th

Jean-Eric Vergne – 16th (after penalty)

Franz Tost, team principal: « We approached this race with several possible strategies, and our original plan was to have Daniel [Ricciardo] run with one stop and JEV [Jean-Eric Vergne] with two. However, it quickly became clear that the one-stop strategy could work for both, so we had JEV change as he was the only driver to start on hards. He did a good job managing others around him on mediums and then managed to climb back up to 12th place, two places better than at the start. Overall, it’s a good performance in terms of pace, and JEV had a very solid and aggressive race. As for Daniel, he got stuck behind Di Resta for a while but overtook him in the second part of the race and built a nice gap. Unfortunately, in the very last laps, his tires gave out, and he couldn’t hold off Button. It’s never pleasant to lose a point in the last lap, but it was a solid performance that could have been much better if we had qualified better on Saturday. »

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Force India

Paul di Resta – 15th

Adrian Sutil – Abandon

Dr Vijay Mallya, team principal: « Despite the promises glimpsed at various moments over the weekend, we leave the United States without the results we thought possible. Our chances took a blow in the first lap with Adrian [Sutil]’s accident, which was a consequence of contact with Maldonado. This placed all our hopes on Paul [di Resta], and we hoped to repeat the strategy implemented in Abu Dhabi by making only one stop. For a long time, we thought this was possible, but we failed to achieve the tire management we hoped for and had to bring him in for a late second stop. We knew it would be difficult to score points today, but I’m convinced things will be better next week at Interlagos thanks to our work. »

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Marussia

Jules Bianchi – 18th

Max Chilton – 21st

John Booth, Team Principal « A fantastic result for the team and Jules today, which is directly attributable to the hard work both at the factory and on the track over the past few weeks. Until yesterday’s qualifying, we had to acknowledge that we were having a very difficult weekend. The guys in the garage and the engineers put in a lot of effort to turn this weekend around. We saw the result of this team work pay off during the race for Jules, and he took advantage by putting in a race of incredible maturity. Max’s race was affected by the penalty he had to serve at the start of the race. His pace was very good and he set a faster lap time than both Caterhams, which shows that the gap at the end of the race is unrealistic and entirely due to the numerous blue flags he had to contend with. Both cars were helped by fantastic starts and a great first corner. For Jules, this allowed him to stay ahead of van der Garde from start to finish. We established a good strategy on the pit wall and the pit stops went well. Additionally, today’s result is the fruit of the late developments we brought to the car thanks to considerable efforts at the factory, which managed this performance improvement while trying to juggle with the preparation for 2014. This highlights how much we are pushing for /f1/actualite/16602-dimanche-le-grand-8-pour-sebastian-vettel-et-red-bull.html and the next season. »

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Caterham

Giedo Van der Garde – 19th

Charles Pic – 20th

Caterham has not published statements from an official.

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