Sunday: Tough adversity for McLaren, who finished in the points
The McLaren mechanics did not rest during this race with two front wing changes and a blown tire replacement. Despite this, Jenson Button managed to secure 8th place while Sergio Perez was the last driver in the top 10.
Jenson Button – 8th
« It was predictable that turn 3 would be a real mess. As expected, there was an incident. A car was hit, went wide, and touched me. The contact damaged my front wing. It didn’t trouble me too much to stay with the cars ahead, but it really affected the temperatures. So I had to change the front wing on the fourth lap, which cost me a bit of time.
Our pace on mediums was good and I was able to complete two strong stints on mediums to stay in the race. At my second pit stop, the lights (for releasing from the box, ed.) turned green, then red. So I briefly stopped as a precaution right after being released. I quickly looked behind me to make sure everything was fine. Everything seemed okay, so I continued on. Considering these delays, 8th place is not a bad result.
Nevertheless, I was a bit disappointed to lose 7th place at the very end of the race. As soon as I lost the DRS with the cars in front of me, it was over for me. I couldn’t get any temperature into my tires. I knew it was going to be tough against Nico [Rosberg]. His tires were almost ten laps fresher than mine. I did 33 laps with my last set of tires, whereas I had done 18 with the previous one! So I’m happy to have recovered those points. We couldn’t do better than four points today.
Sergio Perez – 10th
« We clearly deserved better today. We were really unlucky. As for my tire explosion, even if that particular set was already old, I braked at the same spot as usual and got a flat due to my lock-up. I did 21 laps with that set, when, all of a sudden, the front right just exploded, destroying my front wing. We were lucky because there were no cars around me. Nonetheless, from the team’s perspective, it’s really disappointing that a single incident like this destroys the progress we made throughout the weekend.
As for Felipe, we were fighting hard to get some points. At one point, I thought he was going to give me more space but then he turned. I tried to brake but we touched a little. During the second incident, I thought I was ahead in the corner. I’m glad the stewards thought there was no need to take further action: it’s just racing.
