Categories: FeatureFeatures

British Grand Prix quotes of the weekend

“I think it’s a good thing. I would rather take the fans than not having them.”

Kimi Raikkonen is - by his standards - ecstatic to hear he’s the most popular F1 driver among fans

“I think the negativity does come from the press. I honestly do. And I think… I presume you’re referring to Mr Ecclestone when you say the negative comes from him. I think he reacts to what is written in the press.”

Lotus CEO Matthew Carter endears himself to the journalists in the FIA Press Conference on Friday

“How would I respond to the chief executive’s comment that he had a crappy product to sell? He shouldn’t be selling the product if he thought it was crap. But considering that he sells the product – that he calls crap and makes billions out of it – he needs to work with the participants to un-crap it!”

Vijay Mallya comes up with a new word to describe the direction F1 needs to take (Ecclestone was actually referring to the power units rather than the sport itself)

“It’s a nice evening for everyone and Nico invited me along. I was next door, so I would have gone anyway! The barbecue was great but I didn’t get to eat too much. He put all these sweets out just for me. He knows that’s going to make me heavy – but I didn’t go there – so that’s good.”

Lewis Hamilton is wise to Nico Rosberg’s attempts to find an advantage at a barbecue he put on for the Mercedes team at Silverstone

“Honestly I didn’t get to see the big match and I don’t know who won. (Serena Williams) I thought she would, yeah, which is fantastic.”

Hamilton fails to toe the patriotic line after British tennis player Heather Watson is beaten at Wimbledon by America’s Serena Williams

“I gave him a nipple tweak a minute ago, I got a bit of a smile in return, so there are still some positive feelings after qualifying!”

Jenson Button explains how he keeps morale high between himself and team-mate Fernando Alonso…

“It was a bit of a game, which didn’t function. My wife sent me a Whatsapp saying: ‘You guys think you can fool us? Hahaha’. So it was worth at least the entertainment.”

Toto Wolff admits Mercedes was bluffing a pit stop to try and force Williams in to a mistake, but his phone soon told him it had failed

“I think there was a proposal for a budget cap with freedom of wind tunnel and testing, but that is like putting an alcoholic in a wine cellar…”

Christian Horner doesn’t think F1 has come up with any realistic ideas to lower costs and make the sport more attractive for new teams

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.