Force India
Nico Hulkenberg
“Obviously a good result for the team, but I still feel a bit frustrated with how the race unfolded because things didn’t work in my favour today. I really lost out under the virtual safety car, which allowed a lot of cars to jump me when I had already made the switch to intermediates. Then, I was stuck behind Felipe [Massa] for so many laps, even though I was a lot quicker than him. There was only a narrow dry line with a lot of standing water offline so it wasn’t easy to make a move. When everybody moved to dry tyres it was a lot of fun out there and you had to be very careful through turn one, which remained damp for so long. I did a very long stint on the medium tyres and by the final few laps it was just a case of trying to manage the degradation and survive until the end. Although I’m not totally happy, I am pleased with the car performance and the fact that we scored good points today.”
Sergio Perez
“It’s a very good result for the team, with two cars in the points, even if I feel I could have kept fifth place without that spin at turn one. When I had that moment I thought my race was over, but I managed to save it. However, I flat-spotted my tyres and that hurt me for the rest of the race in terms of degradation. I pushed hard to try and keep Raikkonen behind, and it was only when he passed me that I was able to take it easy and save the tyres. We had to do a very long stint on the mediums, which was a bit of a risk as degradation was quite high, but the team made the right calls at the right time and it paid off in the end. The conditions, especially in the first part of the race, were very tricky. You had a drying line, but as soon as you put a wheel on the damp parts, all the grip was gone. Just keeping the car facing in the right direction was an achievement. To come away with this many points after a weekend in which I hadn’t been very comfortable with the car is a big satisfaction and it makes up for the disappointment of last week.”
Vijay Mallya, Team Principal and Managing Director
“Today’s race was extremely entertaining and I am very happy with our team performance. It’s our best ever result at Silverstone and we are now just 19 points adrift of fourth place in the championship. It wasn’t an easy race by any means, especially with the track drying out so quickly in some places and remaining damp in others. Nico and Checo were both in the thick of the action all afternoon and did a splendid job to bring home 14 important points. We’ve shown today just how competitive we can be on one of the most demanding high-speed tracks of the year and I think there is even more potential to come in the second half of the season.”
