Sebastian Vettel started from pole position and took off easily ahead of hamilton, but already in the third corner Vettel suffered a puncture and spun off. Lewis Hamilton therefore becomes the first driver other than Sebastian Vettel to win at Yas Marina. The Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes Pit called it “a brilliant race, and a very controlled race”.

Vodafone McLaren-Mercedes

Martin Whitmarsh, Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes

“Lewis drove an utterly faultless race today, taking the lead at the second corner and controlling the gap back to Fernando with consummate skill over the remaining 54 laps. To put it simply, he was brilliant today. Jenson, too, drove a truly excellent race, managing KERS Hybrid problems throughout, and emerging with a hard-won third place and 15 valuable world championship points to consolidate his second position in the drivers’ world championship. While I’m on the subject of KERS Hybrid, it’s worth paying tribute to the excellence of our Mercedes-Benz system. It’s been fantastically reliable all season, and has delivered considerable performance benefits too; today’s hiccup was therefore extremely rare. So I want to say a big “Bravo!” to all the guys at Brixworth [Northamptonshire, UK], where Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines is based, for a job very well done all year. Returning to the subject of today’s race, it’s always a great feeling to see two Vodafone McLaren Mercedes drivers on the podium together, and today I’m particularly delighted for Lewis, but also for Jenson, and of course for the entire team too. It was Lewis’s 17th career grand prix victory, all of them scored for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, his third of the season, and the sixth time this year we’ve had occasion to pull on our famous Vodafone rocket-red victory T-shirts. But 2011 isn’t done and dusted yet – from here we’ll travel to Brazil, and the famous Interlagos circuit, over whose majestic twists and turns Lewis and Jenson will be trying their damnedest to score Vodafone McLaren Mercedes’ seventh victory of the year. Bring it on!”

Scuderia Ferrari

Stefano Domenicali

“We knew a podium was possible and that was confirmed this evening when, thanks to yet another extraordinary drive from Fernando, we were in the fight for the win right up until the final part of the race. The Spaniard’s first lap was exceptional, as was his race pace after that. Felipe also got off to a very good start, in contention for a podium place, but then, on the Medium tyres, he struggled and was unable to run at a pace good enough to stay ahead of Webber. Finally getting a driver onto the podium in this race is indeed cause for satisfaction. Now there’s one race to go, in two weeks time in Brazil. Second place in the Drivers’ championship is still up for grabs. That will be hard to achieve but it is definitely not impossible and we will do all we can to give Fernando the tools to achieve this. Interlagos is also an important weekend for Felipe, whom I am sure will want to give his always enthusiastic fans something to cheer about.”

Pat Fry

“A nice result thanks to Fernando driving an attacking race from start to finish, after producing a fantastic first lap. The pace on the Soft tyres was what it should have been, so we were always close to Hamilton. In the second stint of the race, Fernando got a bit caught up in backmarker traffic and lost at least a couple of precious seconds, but then, even if we had made a perfect pit stop (we lost around a second and a half at the second one) we would not have managed to get him out on track ahead of the McLaren man. Right from Friday, we realised our pace on the Mediums was not as good as that of our closest competitors, so after that we could not attack. From a strategic point of view, we tried to exploit our better tyre degradation but, unlike what happened in India in our duel with Webber, here, the move did not work out. Felipe drove a good first part of the race, but then he struggled more than his team-mate with our difficulty on the harder compound. In any case it would have been hard to stay ahead of Webber, but his spin robbed him of any remaining opportunity. Now we have three days of very important testing, the only ones we have between now and February: it presents a great opportunity to try out new ideas, to resolve some problems we still have and above all, to give a talented youngster like Jules Bianchi some more experience.”

Red Bull Racing

Christian Horner

“After such a great qualifying yesterday, it was a really frustrating race. Sebastian made a perfect start and had a clear lead into the first corner and then an instantaneous loss of pressure in the tyre made him a complete passenger. The resulting suspension damage from that meant there was no alternative but to retire the car today. For Mark, he was in a close scrap with Jenson. On the first pit stop we had a wheel nut issue and thereafter it dropped him behind Felipe Massa, so at that point we opted for a different strategic route and a three stop race, which was the only opportunity to take on and beat Massa and to have a go at Jenson. Unfortunately there just weren’t enough laps to pull out a big enough gap, but it was worth a go and Mark drove well. Fourth was ultimately the best we could achieve today. So, at a track that’s been so good to us for the last two years, it’s frustrating to have our first DNF of the year due to a tyre issue. Congratulations to Lewis on a strong drive today.”

Cyril Dumont, Renault

“A disappointing day. It’s a shame that we finished the race with Seb out of Turn One already with a puncture. Looking at Mark’s race, I think it was pretty solid. We decided to swap to a three stop strategy to undercut Massa and it worked pretty well. It’s the first time that we are not on the podium this year and we’ll come back stronger in Brazil.”

Mercedes GP Petronas

Ross Brawn

“A very lively first lap between our drivers today which was highly entertaining. We’ve often said that they are free to race as long as they keep it sensible, and it was good to see today. Nico had the stronger pace this evening, and his lap times during the race were quite encouraging. Our performance today reminds us of the little bit that we have to close down to become truly competitive, but it is within reach. Both Nico and Michael drove extremely well, and with good pit stops and a sound strategy, we achieved possibly the best results that we can at the moment.”

Norbert Haug

“Sixth and seventh places for Nico and Michael are the best possible results with our current technical package, and our team has now finished in the top six rankings for the fifth time in the last seven races. These positions are certainly not our ultimate target but during the building-up time of our team, it is nevertheless positive to get the best possible results. A big thank you to the organisers of the spectacular race here in Abu Dhabi which creates a great atmosphere and fantastic television images. In this ‘home’ race for our team, we have achieved the results that we are currently capable of, and we want to come back next year with a quicker car and a better performance for our partner and co-owner Aabar. Congratulations to Lewis Hamilton and McLaren Mercedes for their victory today, which is the 71st Grand Prix win for McLaren Mercedes since 1997. Compliments also to everybody at Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines for having six Mercedes-powered cars between P1 and P9 today.”

Sahara Force India F1 Team

Dr. Vijay Mallya, Team Principal and Managing Director

“We came here determined to deliver a strong result and we’ve come away with six important points to consolidate our sixth place in the constructors’ championship. Both drivers drove faultless races, splitting the strategies and covering all the options. So I’m very pleased with our performance as a team, which puts us in a much stronger position with 15 points advantage over our nearest competitor. I feel confident that we can go to Brazil to finish the job and confirm our sixth place in the championship.”

Sauber F1 Team

Peter Sauber, team principal

“Both drivers showed a lot of fighting spirit and set very good lap times for most of the race. It was good to score a point today, but we didn’t achieve the maximum we could. Sergio’s race was hampered by his early pit stop to replace the front wing, and for Kamui the team didn’t handle his second stop perfectly. However, our race pace was encouraging today.”

Giampaolo Dall’Ara, head of track engineering

“The early part of the race wasn’t easy for us because Sergio made contact with a Force India and had to pit after two laps because the pylon at the front wing was broken. As a result of the early stop we had to change the strategy. Our plan was to do two stints on soft tyres and the final one on medium, but under the circumstances we fitted the medium at the first pit stop. This worked okay. Sergio was able to get back in the points, but he then suffered a KERS problem and let Kamui by. With Kamui we were a bit too optimistic at the beginning of the race. He was on the medium compound. Once we realised that he was struggling to find grip we decided on an earlier stop than we had planned. This was good tyre-wise, but put him in a lot of traffic. However, he drove a good race, overtaking aggressively, and he finally scored a well-deserved point, which is good for the morale of the whole team.”

AT&T Williams F1

Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer

“Rubens started from the back and raced on a two stop, soft-biased strategy starting on the medium tyre. Pastor completed a one stop strategy, also starting on the medium tyre. Both drivers made strong progress through the field and by lap 13 Rubens and Pastor were P14 and P15, respectively. Rubens lost a bit of time on his first stop with a slow rear tyre change but continued to push hard to the end of the race finishing a credible 12th – almost catching Perez at the end for 11th. Pastor was given a drive through penalty for a blue flag infringement and a subsequent 30 second end-of-race penalty for another infringement finishing 14th.”

Lotus-Renault GP

Eric Boullier

“That was not what we were looking for today. We knew that this weekend would not be our finest of the season; the trend of slower tracks not clicking with the R31 has repeated itself over the past three days. We had differing strategies today, but neither one was fruitful. Also, our reliability problems did not help. The boys have put in a big effort this week to try and give us something to smile about at this fantastic venue. Unfortunately it was not to be and it will be all eyes to Brazil to try and finish the season on a high.”

Alan Permane

“A disappointing day for us with neither car scoring any points. We had a few problems with Vitaly’s car early on with the DRS failing, so we knew we wouldn’t be able to overtake anyone. This led us to try a one stop race but the hard tyre didn’t last long enough so we had to stop for the soft. Bruno had a problem with his KERS which really cost him, and put him back around half a second each lap. There’s no real positives to take from today.”

Scuderia Toro Rosso

Franz Tost

“This was a night of missed opportunities. As we had expected, we were not as competitive in qualifying here as we had been in India, but felt we would show better in the race. In the early stages, this proved to be the case, with Sebastien running as high as seventh at one point. However, he had to bring the car into the pits and retire with an hydraulic failure caused by a leak from the system. Jaime was running a couple of places behind his team-mate, but there was a mistake at his first pit stop, which cost him a lot of time and therefore he dropped down the order. From then on, he drove well, putting in some competitive lap times, but the points positions were no longer within his sights. With Sauber scoring one point today, our battle with them for seventh in the championship must now go down to the wire in Brazil at a track that should suit our car characteristics better than this one.”

Team Lotus

Thierry Salvi, Renault Sport F1 Support Leader

“I think we managed to get as much as we could hope for today. We have been focusing on giving the drivers the right mix of top-end speed, rear-end stability and good responsiveness in the low to mid-speed corners, and I think Heikki’s early pace showed that we keep going in the right direction.”

Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer

“A solid race for us and good to see both cars across the finish line with no problems all afternoon. We opted for the same strategy on both cars, running the first two stints on the soft tyres and switching to the mediums at the end and it worked out how we had planned it would. Jarno lost some time at the start but he pulled some of that back with a strong middle stint but was then hit by the number of blue flags that he had to slow down for. At the end of the race Heikki was once again chasing down the Renault but just was not able to get past him with the laps he had left. Now we move on to the last race of the season in Brazil where we will be focusing on the season’s number on goal – securing tenth place and giving ourselves the platform we need to keep building for the future.”

Riad Asmat, Group CEO

“We leave Abu Dhabi feeling pretty good about the way the weekend went for the whole team, particularly seeing Heikki having another storming race and mixing it in the midfield for a good part of the afternoon. We keep edging closer to tenth place, and while that is not a step forward for us in championship terms, compared to last year, it is vital for our long-term growth, and when we can carry over the step-up we have made this year in the pitstops, in the factory and in our race pace, we are putting ourselves in the right place for next season and beyond. One more race to go and we will make sure we keep up this level or performance in Brazil before the race team takes a well-earned break.”

Marussia Virgin Racing

John Booth, Team Principal

“A good start to the race saw Timo running as high as 16th in the opening laps. Unfortunately, Jérôme was left behind both of the HRTs, however he was pushing them hard during the early laps. Then on lap 17, Jérôme reported some difficulty with the brakes and also that there was some debris coming out of the left front wheel. We immediately pitted him, instigating a pit stop with inspection of the front braking system. It was clear though that it was not possible to continue and we retired him. Meanwhile on track, Timo was having a good opening stint, pulling a comfortable gap out over Liuzzi and Ricciardo, who had stopped very early. A small issue at his first stop lost him a bit of time, however he still came out in front of Ricciardo. For the second stint Timo managed his tyres to ensure that he could get as far as possible. It was a little like India in that by staying on the Soft tyre, he would be quicker than the HRTs, which again had stopped early for the Medium tyre. However, we came up against Trulli – again on the Medium tyre – so we had to stop earlier than we would have liked. At this point with the HRTs clearly behind, we opted to save gearbox and engine, turning everything down for the last five laps. Given our record of reliability it is disappointing that we haven’t achieved a two-car finish in the last two races, however this will be our strong focus for Brazil.”

HRT F1 Team

Colin Kolles, Team Principal

“Clearly, this is not the result we were hoping for at all after the performance level we’ve had over the past races but the drivers did everything they could. We had a good pace. Tonio went for a one stop strategy, which proved not to be the best one in the end. Daniel, instead, was going for two stops and carried a really consistent pace racing Glock throughout the race. Unfortunately, he couldn’t finish the race three laps from the end because of an electrical problem. It is a real shame because he was doing a fantastic race. Now we have to look ahead to Brazil and expect not to have any of these problems again.”