Belgium: The race seen from the pits

Red Bull

Sebastian Vettel – Winner

Mark Webber – 5th

Christian Horner, Team Principal: « It’s a fantastic victory for the team and for Sebastian, who broke away right from the first lap. He had a very good start but built up his position by taking the first corner well, knowing that the first passage through Eau Rouge would be vital. He fought for it, managed to go around the outside of Lewis, and charged ahead to widen the gap. For Mark, his clutch was problematic while preparing on the grid. We did what we could to fix it but he lost a place to Rosberg at the start. Once he settled into the pack, it was impossible for him to have a clear track ahead at La Source, and Alonso rushed past him at Eau Rouge. After that, it was about finding a way through, overtaking the Mercedes and Ferraris ahead, but unfortunately, every time we got close, it seemed like we lost aerodynamic performance, and Mark couldn’t get close enough to attempt an overtaking move. We didn’t come here with guaranteed success, so it’s great to secure a victory to start the second half of the season.

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Ferrari

Fernando Alonso – 2nd

Felipe Massa – 7th

Stefano Domenicali, Team Principal: Even if the qualifying sessions didn’t really provide an accurate picture of the hierarchy in the pits, today’s result shows just how competitive our car is. This second place was not easy to achieve and follows a difficult month with a lot of speculation, to which we prefer to respond with results on the track. Certainly, this result is not enough because we cannot claim to be satisfied as long as we have not reduced the gap with Red Bull and are able to fight for first place. In the upcoming races, we will try to improve the car to give Fernando a chance to fight for the championship title and for Felipe to provide a spectacle that can help the team. These are our goals, the rest does not matter.

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Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton – 3rd

Nico Rosberg – 4th

Ross Brawn, Team Principal: It was a good team result, we scored a good number of points for both championships, but in terms of pace, we were missing half a second that we needed to fight for victory on this circuit, especially when the tires were new. The performance of both cars was quite respectable at the end of the race, but we weren’t fast enough in the early stints. Both drivers delivered a faultless performance and the team executed the pit stops well, so we managed to extract the maximum from the car this afternoon. It’s a good foundation for the second half of the season and now we need to find a bit more performance for the upcoming races.

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McLaren

Jenson Button – 6th

Sergio Pérez – 11th

Martin Whitmarsh, Team Principal: Jenson had an excellent start, moving from sixth on the grid to fourth place after the first corner, and he subsequently had a flawless race to finish just 13 seconds off the podium. At one point, we considered opting for a one-stop strategy for him, and, if we had been able to do it successfully, he could have secured that podium. That said, he had an excellent race, and the eight points he scored were well deserved, allowing us to move up to fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship standings. That’s one place higher than where we were this morning. As for Checo, he is disappointed to have been involved in an incident with Romain [Grosjean], because if he hadn’t, he would certainly have scored points as well. So, we are a bit disappointed overall, but we are also happy to see strong evidence of improvement in our pace. We are not yet where we want to be, but the trend is clearly in the right direction.

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Lotus

Romain Grosjean – 8th

Kimi Räikkönen – Retirement

Eric Boullier, Team Director: « It was a disappointing weekend, with qualifying not as good as expected, then a difficult first lap in the race for Kimi who suffered a brake failure which, of course, is one of our concerns even though we think we know why it happened, we will study this in detail to prevent the situation from recurring. Romain finished eighth, which is clearly not the kind of situation we were hoping for at the end of a race weekend. Today, we lost a bit of pace, some of which could be due to the low temperatures. We must now look ahead and learn from this weekend. »

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Force India

Adrian Sutil – 9th

Paul di Resta – Retired

Vijay Mallya, Team Principal: « I am thrilled to see Sahara Force India back in the points after a strong performance by Adrian. He clearly enjoyed himself today, and his overtakes were key moments in the race. The strategy decided by the pit wall helped him stay in the fight for points, and his pace was good. The incident with Maldonado hitting Paul was very disappointing because Paul was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. It clearly cost us a chance to get both cars in the points. We’ll take the positives from this weekend and look to build on this level of performance for the next race in two weeks at Monza. »

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Toro Rosso

Daniel Ricciardo – 10th

Jean-Eric Vergne – 12th

Franz Tost, Team Principal: Usually, we wouldn’t be happy with just the one point from 10th place, but given how things turned out in qualifying, today we can be relieved that our drivers and the team did a good job to make up for it, with Daniel moving from 19th to 10th and Jean-Eric from 18th to 12th. We knew it would be a complicated Sunday, especially as the rain that might have helped us never arrived. But both cars were fast enough to climb back into the middle of the pack, and Daniel and Jean-Eric executed splendid overtakes to move into the points zone. We used two different strategies to try to maximize each opportunity, with Daniel starting on hard tires and running a longer first stint, and in the end, it proved faster than JEV’s strategy, even though they both made two stops. The most positive aspect of today’s performance is that our race pace seems to be back to the level we had earlier this season. We now hope for another competitive performance for our home race in Monza.

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Sauber

Nico Hülkenberg – 13th

Esteban Gutiérrez – 14th

Tom McCullough, Track Engineering Director: « In the end, the race took place in dry conditions, and we opted for a two-stop strategy for both cars. For Nico, it was clear that at the start of the race he struggled with the car’s balance, and the second and third stints were simply not fast enough to score points today. We need to understand why when we have the car and analyze the data. For Esteban, it was clear that starting so far back would be difficult, but his pace and tire management were good, and it’s unfortunate he ended up with a penalty. Otherwise, he could have been close to the points at the end of the race. We will gather now and look forward to Monza in two weeks. »

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Williams

Valtteri Bottas – 15th

Pastor Maldonado – 17th

**Xevi Pujolar, Chief Race Engineer:** Pastor and Valtteri both got off to a good start on mediums and our pace was good. We switched to hards for the second stints to allow us more flexibility if the expected rain arrived at the end, however, the race remained dry and our pace on the hard tires wasn’t fast enough compared to our closest rivals. We also had a challenge with Pastor as his radio stopped working just before his second stop and then coming in, he was involved in an incident with di Resta which required a new front wing. Pastor then received a 10-second stop-and-go penalty for the incident, which pushed him back down the order. Valtteri had a clean race but after being held up during his stint on mediums, we didn’t have the necessary pace with the hards to progress beyond 15th place today.

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Caterham

Giedo van der Garde – 16th

Charles Pic – Retirement

*Caterham has not published statements from the team’s representatives.*

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Marussia

Jules Bianchi – 18th

Max Chilton – 19th

John Booth, Team Director: « It was a tough race today, after a very positive day yesterday. Both our drivers really suffered at the start of the race, losing places faster than expected in the first few laps. From that point in the race, it was mostly about regaining our positions, but unfortunately, we didn’t have the pace to achieve that. In terms of decisions made during the race and the mechanics’ operations during the stops, there were no issues today for a race where we had made improvements in these areas. Overall, we need to get together and try to extract the maximum performance from the current package before the next race in Monza. »

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