We don’t normally do F1 but when we get photos – and a race as poignant as Hungary, we make an exception. A race where we farewelled Jules Bianchi, where Ferrari returned to the top and there wasn’t a Mercedes in sight of the podium…
https://youtu.be/wtFPi3TK98M
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Sergio Perez
“It was a very positive session up until the accident. We managed to get a good read on the balance and made some useful set-up changes that took us in the right direction. Unfortunately we had the failure on the rear suspension, which ended our day early. It has cost us a lot of track time, but hopefully we can recover tomorrow to minimise the impact it will have on our final result this weekend. I still believe we can have a strong qualifying session so I’m optimistic for the rest of the weekend.”
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Paddy Lowe, Executive Director (Technical)
“Not a great day, quite obviously. It began with two rather mediocre race starts. With Lewis, we suspect it was an overheating clutch after the second formation lap. And for Nico, it looked like there was just very little grip from his grid position. We apologise to both drivers for not being able to give them the platform for the start they needed. That put both drivers behind the Ferraris and Lewis then lost further position attempting to pass Nico later on the first lap. So, at that point it was already looking like a difficult afternoon with one driver in third and the other back in tenth. We persevered with our race strategy to attempt to get both cars onto the podium and perhaps even the top step – but it soon became clear that Ferrari were very quick here today and we didn’t have enough of a pace advantage to make that happen. There were then a number of events including minor collisions and penalties which eventually consigned us to sixth and eighth. A bad day without doubt – but as they say, you can’t win them all and it’s still points on the board.”
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Yasuhisa Arai, Honda R&D senior managing officer – chief officer of motorsport
“The temperature today was significantly lower than for Friday’s and Saturday’s practice sessions, which changed the condition of the track drastically, so it was a difficult race. Furthermore, there were many incidents that made the race very hard to read, but we were able to bring both cars home in the points thanks to some brilliant driving from Fernando and Jenson.
“The settings on both the cars and the power units were solid, so this race was important for us in order to prove their worth.
“During such an eventful race, our drivers’ talent, the excellent pit-work and the quick thinking of the engineers shone through. They kept their heads down and pushed, and I’m thankful and happy for the good result.”
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Maurizio Arrivabene, Team Principal
“A fantastic win! Over the past few weeks, we had had comments from people who said we were in a slump, people who obviously can’t or don’t want to read the numbers. As a matter of fact, we had anticipated long time ago that there could be ups and down in the course of the season, but that does not mean that we were stepping back. This weekend started with a horrible Friday for us, so we knew we only had P3 on Saturday to properly set the car up. We calmed down and managed to recover, but still we didn’t know we could win the race. We were only confident that we could fight at the front. Then both Seb and Kimi had a tremendous start and being able to drive in clean air surely made a difference in terms of tyre management, as we knew the first two sets of Options would perform very well. I am very disappointed, though, that Kimi din not make it to the end, because he was having a great day. Congrats to him. This is Formula One and we must accept the lack of reliability as another challenge for the future. We won today, but still keep our feet on the ground and remain humble and committed”.
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Daniel Ricciardo, 3rd
“It was definitely an eventful race but one I am very proud of. I have mixed emotions but I‘m grateful to be on the podium. It’s been a tough year and to have two cars on the podium is pretty surreal. I pushed hard in the last stint when I was on new softs so the opportunity was there to go for the race win. It’s a shame that Nico and I made contact but I wore my heart on my sleeve and left everything I had on the track.”
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Rob Smedley, Head of Performance Engineering
“We weren’t where we expected to be today following the pace we had on Friday. It was an eventful race all round. Valtteri was unfortunately hit from behind through no fault of his own picking up a puncture, and without that could have been on the podium. Felipe’s tyres only worked in the final stint, and we need to investigate why that was as it made for a tough race for him. Results like this make us stronger as a group and we can go away and analyse what went wrong. Williams has been on a constant learning curve over the last 18 months and you have to take days like this with that. We now head into the next few races which will play to our strengths and we’ll aim to recuperate the points we lost today.”
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John Booth, Team Principal
“A very difficult day, at the end of a very difficult week, for our team and the entire F1 community. The build-up to this weekend has been incredibly emotional, but we had one job to do today to honour Jules, and that was to achieve the best possible placings. That’s exactly what we did, and I am so proud of the whole team for their tremendous courage and fortitude. It has been both difficult and comforting for them to see Jules’ family here at the track today. Difficult, because they too are a part of this team and we have shared so many happy occasions together. And comforting, because if they could find the strength to contend with the incredible outpouring of love and affection for Jules today, then we certainly could. It was not easy for any of the drivers, but well done to Roberto and Will for their focus and composure.
“So we reach the summer break, after what has been a very long first stint of the season, from which we take away many positives from the ten rounds so far. The next few weeks will provide everyone with a much-needed opportunity to reboot in preparation for the nine remaining races.”
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Photos by Steve Sziklai July 2015
Quotes from PR
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