Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro took its third podium finish of the season at the Valencia street circuit, as Fernando Alonso finished second. Having started from fourth on the grid, the Spaniard made up a place at the start and then managing to maintain an advantage over Mark Webber’s Red Bull, whose team-mate Sebastian Vettel won the race. In the other Ferrari, Felipe Massa came home fifth.

Red Bull Racing

Christian Horner, Team Principal

“A fantastic team performance with first and third and a lot of points today. It was a tight race with Fernando all afternoon, both our drivers had good starts running one and two initially, then Fernando was able to use the DRS to get ahead of Mark. Mark managed to get back past him through pit stop strategy and then stay ahead, as it evolved into a three stop race. Unfortunately at the last round we just didn’t have enough to stay ahead of him with Mark to get the one-two, but a one-three is still fantastic. Sebastian drove another immaculate race and has consolidated his lead in the Drivers’ Championship. It was another great haul of points today for the team and it was great to have Mr. Mateschitz here to see the Red Bull cars both on the podium today.”

Cyril Dumont, Renault

“First of all I would say that the rules have changed, but not the results, which is a really good thing for all the team. Everyone here at the circuit and everyone doing the pit stops did a really good job today. I would also like to congratulate and thank everyone working for Renault at the factory. It’s another really great result for the team and we have more points than the others, but we have to keep working. We will see how we go in two weeks time, when there are again new rules. “

Scuderia Ferrari

Stefano Domenicali

“Our only target has to be the victory- we are Ferrari after all – but today, all things considered, we can be pleased with this result. It was an exciting and very evenly matched contest: Fernando and Felipe drove great races, fighting right to the end with their main rivals. The Spanish driver, in front of his home fans, managed to end up ahead of a Red Bull to secure a fantastic podium finish. The only negative point came at Felipe’s second pit stop, which might well have cost him the chance of fighting right to the end with Hamilton for fourth place: but he too drove a strong race, especially from the start where he managed to make up two places and attack Webber. Now, we must continue to push on the development of the car in preparation for Silverstone, where we want to confirm the progress we have made at a circuit whose characteristics are less suited to the 150º Italia. There, we will also find out if the technical changes recommended by the FIA regarding the use of the exhausts, which are to be introduced at that race, will change anything or not: everyone will lose a bit in terms of performance, so it’s a case of seeing who pays the highest price.”

Pat Fry

“Overall, it was a good race for us. Going into it, the aim of our strategy was to reduce to a minimum the number of laps we would do on the Prime, both because we did not know what to expect from them and because, from the little we could tell this weekend, our performance was not up to that of our main rivals. On top of that there was the traffic to consider and the fact we were not so sure that the effect of the DRS would be enough to overtake cars that were significantly slower. That is why we did not try to chase after the others, always pitting early, thus lengthening the final stint on the softs which, even though they were very well worn, were faster than the first laps on the Medium. This decision paid off, allowing Fernando to get ahead of Webber to bring home a great second place. Felipe also drove a good race: it’s a shame about the problem with his left rear wheel nut at his second stop, which cost him precious seconds. As for the rest, the mechanics did a very good job, with stop times that were more than respectable. We are still not a match for the best in terms of outright performance and we must work a lot to catch them, especially at tracks where aerodynamic efficiency makes the difference. We are closing the gap but we have to do even more and everyone at Maranello is absolutely determined to achieve that goal.”

Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes

Mercedes GP Petronas

Ross Brawn

“Nico achieved the current potential of the car today with another very solid, mistake-free drive. We couldn’t have realistically expected any more and he scored valuable points. As for Michael, his collision was frustrating because he was running at a very similar level to Nico in the early stages and could also have finished close to him, in the points. After our concerns earlier in the weekend, the tyres behaved well and we didn’t experience any serious degradation problems, which represents a step forward for us compared to previous races. However, we set our targets very much higher than racing for seventh place: our work in the next weeks will focus on improving the car’s performance in order to race with the teams ahead of us.”

Norbert Haug

“Nico’s seventh place is what we could realistically have hoped for today, finishing behind the three top teams with our current technical package, which is lacking performance. The team is working very hard to bring the planned updates for our cars in order to close the gap to the current top six runners. Michael had an unfortunate clash early in the race and the additional pit stop this required prevented him from scoring points.”

Scuderia Toro Rosso

Franz Tost

“I think in future we should sit out qualifying and just save the tyres for the race! But seriously, today the team did a fantastic job opting for a two-stop strategy for Alguersuari, making him the only points finisher to do this. Jaime demonstrated he can deliver a strong race drive, getting a good start and then running at a fast pace from the early stages onwards. Particularly impressive was the way he defended his position in the final laps. It was another fantastic performance just two weeks after he also finished eighth in Canada. In general, his performance curve is going upwards so we can expect more races like this from him in the future. As for Buemi, he was on a different strategy, based on three stops. Unfortunately, he was unable to get the most out of his short stints, even though he was doing similar lap times to Alguersuari in the early stages. In terms of the championship, the team has done a good job as we finished ahead of our closest rivals, Force India and Sauber, closing the gap very slightly to the Swiss team. I must also congratulate everyone who has worked so hard back in Faenza and Bicester, because we had many new parts on the car this weekend and this package definitely worked well, which means we can look forward to this busy period of another three races in four weeks with optimism.”

Force India F1 Team

Lotus-Renault GP

Eric Boullier, team principal

“Given where we qualified, we were looking for a lot more from today’s race. P9 and P11 on the grid is enough to have a really competitive race well into the points. Unfortunately, that did not happen and we were not able to get both cars climbing back up the places enough after a poor start. That said, we did score another point through Nick which keeps us in fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship and ahead of Mercedes GP. We will need to come away from this race understanding why we were not closing down on the cars ahead of us; we know our car is fast and it’s important we look at why we struggled to unlock that pace today.”

Alan Permane, chief race engineer

“It was a poor race from both of our cars and we simply didn’t have sufficient pace to do better. We suffered from enough tyre degradation to necessitate a three-stop strategy and there was no way we could have done only two stops. The extra time in the pits meant we were beaten by a car which made two stops and clearly suffered from less tyre degradation than we did. Nick lost out to Sutil at the second corner and was unable to recover the position. Vitaly lost four places due to an early upshift at the start and this was detrimental to the rest of his race. We have certainly been struggling on circuits with low speed corners, so we hope that the high speed turns of Silverstone will mark an upturn in performance.”

Ricardo Penteado, Renault engine support leader, Renault Sport F1

“A long and tough race for us here and I think everyone would have hoped for some more points considering the starting positions and the potential of the car so far this season. Temperatures were high, as expected, but didn’t pose any issues for us. We were pretty aggressive on the fuel consumption rate at the end of the race as we tried to make up positions but unfortunately Nick wasn’t able to catch Sutil for ninth. That point is important though as we stay ahead of Mercedes in the constructors’ championship. We had a water leak with Vitaly towards the end but we managed to keep it under control and get to the end of the race. It’s been a challenging weekend overall, with the maps between qualifying and the race having to remain the same for the first time. On this point we managed to do a good job to get maximum performance in the race without losing out in qualifying, which a great effort from the trackside and factory team.”

Sauber F1 Team

Peter Sauber, Team Principal

“Up to this race we were able to manage tyres better in the race than others, however, today, this wasn’t the case. During the whole weekend we were not strong enough as a team, but we know we can do better.”

James Key, Technical Director

“We are disappointed to finish outside the top ten for the first time this year. We took a gamble with both cars with the strategy to try and make something out of our compromised grid positions. Sergio did an excellent job to do a one stop race, which for here was always going to be pretty tough. He made his way to P11 in the end and wasn’t too far from the cars ahead in the points. He got quite badly held up by blue flags, and lost quite a bit of lap time there. That happened just before the last stops, and it dropped him back a bit, so we couldn’t make it there at the end. However, it was a good effort from him to hang on to the tyres. Kamui started on the soft tyres, then went on the medium in the middle stint, and tried to use the new soft tyres in the end as a two stopper. That didn’t quite work out. The medium tyres were too slow, but we didn’t want to run too long on the soft in the end. In hindsight maybe a three stop strategy would have been better. It was always going to be difficult to get a car in the points from where we started, because overtaking is still difficult here. We now have to go to Silverstone, a very different track from the last three, and make sure that we can improve.”

AT&T Williams F1

Sam Michael, Technical Director

“We needed a little more performance to get into the points today. Toro Rosso’s two stop and Sauber’s one stop strategies allowed them to jump ahead of us. Rubens drove a consistent race, racing hard with the cars around him. We had a poor start on Pastor’s car and then unusually low tyre pressures on his first set of Prime tyres, but his pace improved considerably on the next set. We have a lot of work to do between now and Silverstone to allow for the rule changes in respect to the exhaust.”

Team Lotus

Thierry Salvi, Renault Sport F1 Support Leader

“Engine-wise that was a good race. Valencia is a track that is hard on both engine temperatures and fuel consumption and we managed both elements well on both cars. The maps we used gave the drivers the right options today which helped when we split the strategies as we did not suffer any drop in performance as a result of the switch.”

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer

“A very solid race from both drivers. We had considered two stops on both cars but when we saw higher degradation levels on Heikki’s car we put him onto three and kept Jarno on two to give both of them a chance to fight. Jarno nearly passed Heikki in the final stops but Heikki’s fresh rubber gave him the chance to edge ahead and the key goal today was to make sure they both finished, so I am pleased we achieved that. This has not been our most competitive type of track but despite that we finished well and that sets us up nicely for Silverstone.”

Tony Fernandes, Team Principal

“A pretty good day for us. I am happy both cars finished but as we are steadily increasing our competitiveness it would have been good to have finished a bit higher. It is obviously a big challenge for us to find the 0.5 seconds that will propel us towards the midfield teams, but we have the right elements in place to help us do that. We will find more downforce and we will continue to grow, both in experience and in pace, and that is why I see days like today as another step in the right direction.”

Marussia Virgin Racing

John Booth, Team Principal

“Overall a pleasing result with both cars taking the flag and Jérôme improving from his qualifying position yesterday by overtaking Liuzzi on track. This means that the cars finished in the correct pace order compared to our direct rivals. Looking on the positive side, we seem to have moved closer towards our nearest competitor ahead of us on the grid, however with such strong reliability throughout the field it’s a little disappointing to end up 21st and 22nd. We got the strategy about right, although perhaps we should have stopped Jerome slightly earlier in the first stint as he was just falling into the second stage of tyre degradation but unfortunately we were already stopping Timo on that lap. Towards the end of the race with Timo we spotted an issue with fuel dropouts in turn 1, which meant he was having to back off. We now head back to the factory for a longer than usual period, ahead of our home race at Silverstone. We are all very excited about working in the new pits and we’re hoping to keep up our current momentum for the next few races.”

HRT F1 Team

Colin Kolles, Hispania Racing Team Principal

“We struggled the whole weekend with the tyres, especially on the rear end of the car. We had to go for a three stop strategy since the wear of the tyres was too high; our main competitors were on two stops. The pace overall was good but due to the additional stop we could not gain positions. We have to work hard, especially in improving the aero and the rear end of the car, in order to reach our targets for the championship.”