FM:
It is just great. It is just fantastic to drive here. As I said yesterday it gives you a lot of pleasure as a driver to drive here. It gives you so many different corners and also having a great car like I had today it is definitely fantastic to fight for the victory and win. It was a very difficult race. We saw that Lewis was pushing very hard. In a way fortunately he had three stops, but it was difficult to hold him on the track as he was very quick. At that moment knowing he was on three stops it was maybe not so good to fight and risk the care knowing that it was pretty possible to get in front again which is what I did. It is just great to come back here at a track where I won for the first time. That is always special. To win for the third time in a row is difficult to explain my feelings.
Q:
That overtaking manoeuvre. How did that come about from your point of view?
FM:
I was trying to go a little bit on the inside but then I saw him going almost on the gravel, so I didn’t risk going more to the left as it would not have been fair and maybe we were going to crash. I tried to brake a bit late but he was inside, knowing where I was braking, so it was much easier to try. Then when he tried I saw him on my inside and I said ‘okay go’ and we will see at the next stop how it is going to be. It was just fine and I was talking with my engineer and he told me the gap should definitely have been okay.
Q:
So no problems during the race?
FM:
Maybe we made a small mistake, a very small mistake, because it is difficult to choose the right tyres here at the track. Our car was working very well on the soft for me on Friday, but not for Kimi. But on the hard it was very good. Then I said after three days the track will be much better, so I think the right directions will be the softs like most of the tracks are like that and the softs always work on the Sundays. But maybe the hard was a bit better knowing how quick Lewis was.
Q:
Lewis, from your point of move where did that overtaking manoeuvre start? How did it happen for you?
LH:
Probably at the beginning of the lap. I knew that I was catching him and I knew that if I could keep close to him at the beginning of the lap I’d be able to tow him down the back straight. The good thing here is you are able to follow at some of the high speed corners, it is not too bad. I knew that also he was having a bit of traffic, so it was a perfect opportunity for me to get up behind him. So I just had to make sure I capitalised on that. I got a late braking into turn nine and managed to get on the power really early. The car was very nicely balanced but right at the end of the straight they are very quick, so even then once I pulled out of the slipstream he began to pull away again. But nevertheless I was able to outbrake him and pass and pull away. Perhaps if that had happened earlier we could have won the race or if I had done a better job in qualifying we probably would have won the race.
Q:
How close was Kimi coming to challenge you at the end?
LH:
At the end of the race, we turned the engine down and just looking after the car really. We knew that we had second place. If I needed to go a little bit quicker I could have, but there was no real need as he was never close enough to do anything. I just tried to keep him at bay. I was quite happy with the car on the hard tyres, but on the soft tyres it was a little bit trickier to maintain a decent gap. There was a lot of traffic at the end and I think they did quite a poor job in getting out of the way. I was behind someone for quite a while and although it looks like they were quite far away it does affect the handling of the car. They are not in my race as such, we are not racing us at the front and it made it quite difficult. But nevertheless I got on with it and came home with second.
Q:
You have said you were almost pushed into a three stop strategy. Is that likely to happen elsewhere or is it something you can change on the car?
LH:
It won’t happen anywhere else. Last year I had the tyre blow-out here, so they were already quite worried. Coming into this weekend they thought they had fixed the problem and somehow we seemed to have the problem again. But then again in the race the tyres were fine. We were sort of put on the back foot going into qualifying knowing that we were not really in the shoot for the win even if we did get pole position. I struggled on my Q3 lap to get a good time, so even with a lighter car I was not able to put it on the front row. However, going into the race I remained optimistic and so did the team and we pushed through. I think the result is the result of hard work from all the guys. They did fantastic pit stops and I think for me I probably drove the best race I have ever done.
