Brawn GP's Rubens Barrichello drove an assured race at Silverstone today to bring his Brawn-Mercedes car home in third position at the team's home Grand Prix. Team-mate Jenson Button secured sixth position to score a valuable three points. Ferrari's Felipe Massa drove a fantastic race starting from 11th and finished on a strong 4th.
Red Bull Racing
Christian Horner
“What a fantastic team result, a one-two, with both guys totally dominating the race. There were so many members of the team here today and, for them to see what their cars can do, when they have put in so much effort, is just incredible. I’m thrilled for everyone at Red Bull, they’ve done a brilliant job. This track suits our car and the drivers have been in fantastic form all weekend. Sebastian was outstanding today and Mark also did a brilliant job – he was very patient when he needed to be behind Rubens in the first stint. It was a great team result. We’ve still got a long way to go to catch Brawn GP, but we’re definitely moving in the right direction.”
Fabrice Lom, Renault, Principal Engineer, Track Support
“Wow, a magic result – first and second at the British Grand Prix. The team is so happy and, for the guys in Milton Keynes, this victory is so deserved – they worked like hell to prepare this new package. It’s a great result for them. For us as the engine partner to be part of this adventure is a great pleasure – so congratulations to everyone back in the factories and let’s enjoy this fantastic result.”
Brawn GP F1 Team
Ross Brawn, Team Pricipal
"Today's result was a pleasing outcome to what has been a challenging home race for the team this weekend. Rubens drove a very composed race to achieve his second consecutive podium finish at Silverstone whilst Jenson recovered well from a poor start to score valuable points for our Championship challenge. We knew from the outset that our car does not work particularly well with the tyres at lower track temperatures and this was clearly evident at Shanghai earlier in the season. The balance of the car and the pace shown by Jenson in the last few laps of the race are however encouraging and we will be taking a close look at the issues that we experienced with the tyres to see what countermeasures can be taken. Congratulations to Red Bull for a superb one-two finish today and we look forward to taking the fight to them in Germany."
Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro
Stefano Domenicali
“After the less than brilliant qualifying yesterday, our aim was to get both cars home in the points and we did it. Felipe drove a fantastic race: starting eleventh and finishing fourth with no one in front of him on the grid retiring is a great performance. Kimi got a great start, making the most of the KERS, but after that he was unable to make the most of having moved up the order, because of traffic. Today, we saw one team clearly ahead of the rest, but we showed we could match the pace of all the others, including those who only two weeks ago, were clearly better. We will have to study in depth everything that happened this weekend to understand how the performance level can change so suddenly, one way or the other, without there having been any changes made to the cars.”
Chris Dyer
“We got the most out of a weekend that was definitely not brilliant in terms of performance. Both our drivers had great starts, getting the most of out the KERS. Then Felipe picked up a good pace that, along with the strategy, allowed him to move up quite a few places. As for Kimi, he was slowed by traffic and the key moment in his race was when Trulli came out on track ahead of him when he made his first pit stop. He was unable to pass him on the track and then, during the run of pit stops, other drivers were able to get ahead of him. Yesterday, we were rather disappointed both with our result and with our performance, but today things were definitely better: however, we have to admit there is still a great deal of work to do to be competitive at the highest level, which is where we want to be.”
AT&T Williams
Sam Michael, Technical Director
It was great for the team to pick up more points today with Nico’s fifth place and it shows we’re still heading in the right direction with development. Nico drove well, it was just a shame he was caught up in traffic for the majority of the race as I think he could have done more. He showed that he was quick by setting the third fastest laptime in the race, only behind the two Red Bulls. With his strategy, it was always going to be difficult for Kazuki to score points, but he is definitely improving, and he really helped the team with set-up direction this weekend.
Panasonic Toyota Racing
John Howett, Toyota team president
"We expected a better result than this but the race didn't turn out as we hoped. Qualifying was very promising and we genuinely expected to fight for the podium but Jarno lost positions at the start and Timo was squeezed going into the first corner. Two points is far less than we expected after the qualifying result but this will motivate us to develop further and come back stronger for one of our home Grands Prix.”
Force India F1 Team
Dr Vijay Mallya, Force India chairman and team principal
“It was a very impressive race performance today from Force India. We had our fair share of bad luck in qualifying yesterday with Adrian's shunt, which unfortunately ruined Fisi's lap as well. Who knows, if we had started further up the grid as we had hoped maybe points would have been in reach today. Nevertheless I am very happy both cars finished: reliability is good, we're competitive and keeping pace with all the others and we beat some top teams as well. Obviously I am delighted that we are getting there, slowly but steadily. I'm very hopeful for the next few races.”
ING Renault F1 Team
Pat Symonds, Renault executive director of engineering
“Our performance today did not meet the expectations that we had after qualifying and so we leave Silverstone disappointed. The poor start for Fernando compromised his race and losing so much time in his first stint made it impossible to score points. Nelson’s one-stop strategy worked well, but it’s clear that we weren’t quick enough today. We need to regroup and improve before Germany.”
Remi Taffin, Renault head of engine operations
“Unfortunately we just weren’t fast enough today. We didn’t have a great start to the race, which meant we were caught in traffic, and with the strategies we were running that made it difficult to move forward. Both drivers drove well and gave their maximum. We must now concentrate on the next race in Germany.”
BMW Sauber F1 Team
Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport director
"For us the race reflects the performance we showed in yesterday's qualifying. Overall it was a disappointing weekend for our team. We will speed up our development programme. The only out of the ordinary situation from our point of view today was when Nick touched another car on the first lap and damaged his front wing. Although he was able to continue until the scheduled pit stop he lost a lot of time."
Willy Rampf, BMW Sauber head of engineering
"We are obviously not happy with this result, but unfortunately it reflects our qualifying performance. In the race we were struggling to get the tyres into the window when they were working at their best. Both drivers complained about lack of grip on the hard compound. With the softer tyre, the pace was acceptable. But at the end of the day here the car was just not competitive. At the Nurburgring we will introduce the next aerodynamic update."
Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal
“This weekend has been a very difficult one for everyone at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes. No-one in our team likes not winning, and it goes without saying that we all remain utterly determined to return to our winning ways. That may not be a realistic prospect for this season - although significant improvements are in the pipeline - but the team is doing a huge amount of work in an effort to gain a full understanding of the performance issues our car is currently facing, with a view to developing next year’s car as well as improving this year’s car. Sometimes you have to go backwards before you can begin going forwards - and, painful as it was for all of us, this weekend was an example of that.”
Norbert Haug, vice-president, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport
“A race to forget. Our performance was by far not where it has to be and where it was when we won five of the last 10 races here on this classic racetrack. We should not talk a lot now but rather work a lot. Congratulations to our German friend Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull Racing and Mark Webber for a very impressive performance and a clearly very dominant one-two today. This was the most impressive performance of the season so far.”
Scuderia Toro Rosso
Franz Tost, Toro Rosso team principal
"First of all, well done to Red Bull for a fantastic job, especially the drivers. Vettel showing incredible pace in the early stages, with he and Webber easily controlling the race. For our part, we were off the pace this weekend and apart from some small technical problems, we were not at the level at which we expected to be. One of the reasons is that we suffer from the lack of new specification aero parts. We will have these for Hungary, when I expect and hope that this will bring us back to the front end of the midfield."
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