Our F1 rundown – what was said from Australia

By Sam TickellRace Reviews
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With the opening Formula 1 Grand Prix being held over the weekend at Melbourne we take a look at the best tweets and quotes from F1 in Australia

Red Bull

Daniel Riccarido “So it’s a bit surreal still, but I’m sure tomorrow it will all sink in. Yeah, a lot of confidence, I’m really happy with how the whole weekend has gone. Dry and wet conditions, showed a lot of confidence and some good pace. Obviously I’ve got to continue this now but the team has to be pleased with what they’re seeing at the moment.”

Mercedes

Nico Rosberg “…despite our success today, we also know that there is still some work to do. We saw over the weekend that reliability is still a concern and it prevented us from having a strong two-car finish. We have two weeks to improve that. I am very much looking forward to Malaysia and I would love to race again tomorrow!”

McLaren

Kevin Magnussen “It’s just fantastic to be on the podium! What happened today just feels surreal. Being on the podium in the first race of my Formula 1 career – it’s amazing. My ‘moment’ at the start was quite scary – I got on the power a bit too quickly, and nearly lost it. But the car was fantastic today – I was always able to place it exactly where I wanted, and I had the pace to fight the Red Bull.”

Ferrari

Fernando Alonso “I’d have liked to start the season with a podium, but getting both cars to the flag is a good result, which can give us confidence, especially on the reliability front. I had some problems with the electric motor at the start and had to make a few changes from the steering wheel, but after the first ten laps everything went well.”

Williams

Valtteri Bottas “I’m a little disappointed with myself because I was pushing a bit too hard and hit the wall which caused a puncture and put me back a long way. I spent the rest of the race trying to make up for that mistake and managed to make some good overtakes, but I need to learn from this and make sure it doesn’t happen again. It felt great to be able to race hard with people around me and I want to say a big thank you to the race team and everyone back at Grove and Brixworth who have done a great job with this car.”

Lotus

Julien Barbieux, Renault Sport F1 team support leader “After such a difficult built up to the race it was some sort of plus to get two cars to just under half distance, but shows we are still not at the level we want. We have struggled all weekend to find the right balance between reliability and performance, but we seemed to turn a corner today and Pastor and Romain were both on the pace of the top 10. Unfortunately both drivers suffered from a malfunctioning MGU-K and were forced to retire.”

 

Sauber

 

 

Monisha Kaltenborn, Sauber team principal “…We knew that our performance was not where it should be. Therefore we concentrated on finishing the race with both cars and being ready in order to take any opportunity, should there be one. Unfortunately we didn’t make it into the points. However, we gained a lot of insight this weekend and we know what we need to work on in order to improve. We now take this experience into the next race weekend.”

 

Force India

 

 

Nico Hulkenberg

“I made a strong start and enjoyed good track position for the first two stints when I was running up in fourth. The only real issue I had was some front left graining on the soft tyres, which never really cleared up and that compromised my first two stints. It was a shame to lose two positions at my second stop [to Button and Alonso] but it looks like some of the cars around us have a bit more pace at the moment.”

Toro Rosso

Danii Kvyat

“It was a very intense afternoon and finishing my first race with a point is a great feeling. It was a fantastic first Grand Prix weekend with the team, everyone worked really hard and scoring points was a great way to end it. So well done to everyone! The start was a bit messy, but after that I managed to get into a rhythm and the car seemed competitive compared to those around us.”

Caterham

Kamu Kobayashi

“That isn’t how I wanted my first race back to go, and I’m sorry for the team and for Felipe (Massa) that both our races ended early. I had a really good start but then into turn one I made contact with Felipe. From the initial data it looked like I had a brake system issue which obviously meant I couldn’t do much about the contact and when we got the car back and looked at the information in much more detail it was clear that was the problem. After the race I went to the stewards and they went through the data from the car and confirmed this was the case. We’ll have a close look at what caused that problem and make sure we fix it.”

Marussia

Max Chiltion

“The start was obviously extremely concerning. I was on the grid preparing for the formation lap with the usual procedures and suddenly everything just cut out. At that point I was worried that my race was already over, but the team did a fantastic job to push me off the grid and back to the garage where they reset the car and I was able to start the race from the pit lane. From that point on I knew we had an important job to do to get the car home, but at the same time do the hard work to we needed to be able to evaluate the car over a race distance.”

 

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