Categories: FeatureFeatures

Brazilian Grand Prix - Quotes of the weekend

F1i looks back at some of the best quotes from the Brazilian Grand Prix weekend, including plenty of humour from the McLaren drivers

©JensonButton/Instagram

“We don’t have any weaknesses, we’re perfect.”

Jenson Button in the Thursday press conference when each driver was asked for his team’s strengths and weaknesses this year


“Now Niki is usually not the best one to trust, let’s put it this way, he’s changing his opinion very quickly and sometimes what he says makes sense and other times it doesn’t make any sense so yeah, the more he’s talking about us the better it is for us because he can feel that maybe we’re coming, so hopefully that’s good news.”

Sebastian Vettel refutes Niki Lauda’s claim that Ferrari is a match for Mercedes on the power unit front, with a little dig at the triple world champion thrown in for good measure


“Not enough! It was beautiful weather and when I saw the medical car come I said ‘maybe half an hour more would be better’ … I told them they should have a frequent passenger [program] because I have some mileage this year!”

Fernando Alonso jokes about his decision to sunbathe trackside after stopping in Q1


“We’ve seen it has not really given us anything, so back to the drawing board for Renault.”

Daniel Ricciardo doesn’t give the feedback Red Bull wanted to hear regarding the upgraded Renault power unit


"It doesn't even work in any other category. We hear the aggravation in GT racing and it does my head in hearing ideas. It's like we are completely stuck, eyes closed, on what happens in other series and the problems around that, that somebody just pulls a rabbit out of his pocket and says, 'why don't we do that?’ But I'm not surprised to hear - let's call it 'interesting' - new concepts, from around the corner. That happens regularly.”

Toto Wolff is not a fan of the alternative engine idea from the FIA, then…


“There’s never been any discussions. You guys try to make it a big story out of it because we came together twice. It could have happened with any other driver, so it’s not like there are problems; there are no issues. It was not good for either of us in those two occasions but it’s part of racing. I’m sure we’ll try to stay more off each other’s way.”

Kimi Raikkonen insists there are no problems between himself and Valtteri Bottas, then admits they will try to avoid each other on track


MB: “You’ve got to do this earlier in the year, so you can have a fight in the world championship…"

NR: “Thank you very much for that piece of advice, I could figure that out for myself!”

Martin Brundle states the obvious to Nico Rosberg on the podium after his second consecutive victory from pole position


Q: “Jenson, you’re smiling which is good to see. You beat your team-mate, so are you happy?”

JB: “Yeah, no I’m just laughing because the previous question, the only question that guy asked me was ‘what do you think about having grid boys at this race?’!”

Q: “And what do you think?!”

JB: “What do I think? Personally I would prefer grid girls…”

Q: “Did you have a grid girl or a grid boy?”

JB: “I had a grid boy. He was pretty stacked, but not really my cup of tea.”

Button wasn’t a huge fan of the Brazilian Grand Prix starting grid featuring a mix of grid girls and grid boys


NR: “Up front I had the pace advantage over Lewis today so of course he’s not going to come by me because in the end of the race I was six seconds in front.”

LH: “Contrary to what Nico was saying, there was one point where I was all over him but I just couldn’t get by, I just couldn’t get close enough in that last second and I did have the fastest lap, so I obviously had the pace today.”

Rosberg and Hamilton disagree over who was the quicker driver in the Brazilian Grand Prix


“I think Nico is developing as a racing driver and you can see that all of those turn one incidents had a similar pattern, where you position yourself with the car and where you need to be.  If you are the outside car you need to give up. Not only between the two of them, you see it in other races. We saw with Verstappen today in turn one he held onto it… and Bottas in the last race… so I am just talking rubbish!”

Wolff tries to understand where Rosberg has improved in recent races, and finds himself heading down a blind alley

Brazilian Grand Prix - Driver ratings

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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.

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