* Our car data showed Mark's car was stationary for 1.923 seconds during his pit stop - breaking our previous record of 2.05 seconds (set at the 2013 Malaysia GP).

Thierry Salvi, Renault: "A great result again today with Seb winning and Mark on the third step of the podium. Seb was never bothered by anyone, demonstrating his supremacy again. Mark had a difficult Turn 1, but was able to come back to the podium after a fantastic overtaking move on Hamilton. The car was awesome this weekend and everyone was able to bring out all the little things that make the package very, very quick. We'll have to remember such an amazing end to the 2013 season."

Pat Fry: "Once again we proved to be more competitive in the race, even if today's result is not the best testimony to that. Those who started from the clean side of the track, like Hamilton, Perez and Bottas, managed to make up a few places. We on the other hand, aware of the difficulties of starting on the dirty side, opted in Fernando's case on a strategy of staying out for a few extra laps: thanks to his talent, Fernando made up the place lost to the McLaren at the start and then took fifth place. With the hard tyre, he had a good pace and was able to attack Hulkenberg at the right moment and stay ahead, controlling the tyre wear. From thirteenth on the grid, Felipe managed to get away well, but he was then immediately stuck behind a Force India. From then on, his race was an uphill struggle and while trying a different strategy, in the hope that something might happen to those ahead of him, we didn't manage to get him in the points. It's a real shame having lost to Mercedes again, because today we could have been in the fight. We will definitely try again in Brazil."

"We opted to put both our drivers on early one-stop strategies, in an attempt to allow them to 'under-cut' their nearest rivals, but, as I say, as things turned out we failed to gain any advantage by doing that.

"That being the case, Checo drove a solid and controlled race to come home seventh, which was in fact the position from which he'd started the race, further underlining how difficult it was to overtake here today.

"Jenson started from P15, owing to a troubled qualifying yesterday, but thereafter drove an excellent race, skillfully nursing a car whose left-hand front-wing endplate had been significantly damaged in a lap-one contact with another car. Despite the understeer handicap that that damage had caused, however, Jenson was able to record some impressive lap-times - and, driving with measured aggression all the while, climbed the leader-board to 10th place at the finish, expertly controlling his tyre wear, and taking a very hard-earned world championship point by pulling off a slick yet spectacular passing manoeuvre on Daniel [Ricciardo] on the race's penultimate lap.

"That move marked a fitting end to a frustrating weekend for Jenson, but I hope he'll take some comfort from the knowledge that today he equalled our old friend David's [Coulthard] all-time record of 246 grand prix starts by a British driver. He'll establish a new benchmark of 247 grand prix starts by a British driver next weekend in Brazil.

"Talking of Brazil, which will be the final grand prix of a gruelling 19-race schedule, we'll now make our way to Sao Paulo as determined as ever to do our utmost to score as many world championship points as we possibly can and thereby consolidate our fifth-place position in the constructors' world championship. No, finishing fifth isn't what McLaren is all about, but I want to say a big 'thank you' to our mechanics in particular, who have worked very hard and extremely diligently to ensure that our reliability has been first-rate this season even though our relative competitiveness hasn't.

"Last but not least, once again I want to pay tribute to the Circuit of the Americas, and all who sail in her. Undoubtedly, Formula 1 has now found its spiritual home in the United States, and I think I speak for all at McLaren when I say that we love visiting Austin Texas and are already looking forward to coming back again next year, where we'll be aiming to compete closer to the front of the field than we did here today."

A lightning start from Romain saw the Frenchman leapfrog Mark Webber for second place at the first corner, with Heikki dropping to twelfth as the safety car emerged for an incident involving Adrian Sutil. Both drivers maintained position at the restart; remaining as such until the first round of pit stops.

Managing his pace and tyre degradation perfectly, Romain held off a strong charge from Mark Webber immediately following a single pit stop each, and again in the latter stages of the race. Heikki rose as high as tenth after the opening batch of stops, only to suffer a loss of front downforce which forced the Finn to pit for a new nose having dropped two positions in quick succession.

Romain crossed the line to clinch a fourth podium finish from the last five races - his sixth overall in 2013 - to see the Frenchman ranked the second highest points scorer since the Singapore Grand Prix behind World Champion Sebastian Vettel. Heikki came home fifteenth at the flag.

Kimi Raikkonen's absence from the race sees him fall to fourth place in the Drivers' Championship on an unchanged 183 points; four behind Lewis Hamilton in third. Romain remains in seventh position with 132 points; trailing Nico Rosberg by 29. The team remains fourth in the Constructors' Championship on 315 points from Ferrari's 333, with third spot remaining a firm target heading into the final round in Brazil.

Heikki started from eighth on the grid with a scrubbed set of medium tyres; pitting for new hards on lap 17 and fresh mediums on lap 31. The Finn's second stop included a nose change after the Finn reported a loss of front downforce. Romain started from third on a scrubbed set of medium tyres; making a single stop for a new set of hards on lap 29.

Eric Boullier, Team Principal: "It's been another positive weekend for the team. We scored more points than our championship rivals through a perfect drive from Romain. It really was his best Grand Prix ever and another excellent performance to add to his recent run of great form. The only way we could fight the Red Bulls was if Romain made a great start and that's exactly what he delivered. It's disappointing that Heikki couldn't convert his eighth place on the grid to a points finish, but we had issues with his front wing and KERS which we will investigate before Brazil."

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: "We congratulate Romain on an absolutely faultless race of 100% perfection lap after lap. He was under enormous pressure from Mark Webber in what was clearly a faster car and he did exactly what was asked of him at every turn of the race. It was a shame for Heikki as he didn't have a great start, then he had an issue with front wing and then KERS. On the plus side, he ran to the end of the race so has gained valuable experience in the E21 ahead of Brazil."

Ricardo Penteado, Renault Sport F1 Team Support Leader: "A great result for Romain and awesome to see our package beating one of the Red Bulls on sheer pace. At this stage in the season - and in the fight for the Constructors' Championship - these points will be very important. Heikki did a good job all weekend but unfortunately could not challenge for the points after a change for a new front wing and then a KERS issue when he rejoined. It seems to be a mechanical issue and we'll check after tonight to see how to prevent a reoccurrence in Brazil."

Ross Brawn: That was a pretty good race this afternoon with the car we had today. It was very definitely a managed race rather than one where the drivers could push flat out. Lewis made a fantastic start but it then became clear that trying to hold Webber behind would not help us in our quest to run a one-stop strategy, which was essential. The car was not bad and both drivers had a pretty good balance, given the extreme difference in conditions to yesterday. Both Lewis and Nico did a perfect job managing the tyres in the race and their sets of primes were close to the end of their life when they crossed the line, which is exactly as it should be. They put in very, very controlled drives today which allowed us to consolidate our second position in the Constructors' Championship. Now it's time to head for Sao Paulo to finish the job.

Toto Wolff: As a single race result, fourth and ninth positions are not what we aim for as a team but in the context of yesterday's qualifying result and of the battle for second place in the Constructors' Championship, we did a solid job. It was a race that needed management and both drivers and the pit wall managed it well today. Lewis opened up his race with a fantastic start and first corner, then drove in a very precise and controlled way, managing the gap to cars behind without abusing his tyres. Nico didn't have many opportunities to move forward given the optimum strategy was a one-stopper and there were no retirements ahead of him. But he took every opportunity that came his way and gained three places. We scored an important 14 points for the Constructors' battle and will now focus on cementing that position in Brazil.

Monisha Kaltenborn, Team Principal: "We are very happy with this solid result for the team. We didn't have any problems with the cars throughout the race and the team put in a good performance. Again, Nico drove a good race and we will look to see if we could have done anything different, so we might have been able to improve and gain one more position. With Esteban we opted for an unusual strategy, because of the difficulty due to his starting position, hoping he would be able to overtake a couple of cars at the end of the race. Unfortunately, this didn't work out. Nevertheless, we can be happy with his performance."

Tom McCullough, Head of Track Engineering: "Scoring points was our aim today after qualifying well. Nico had a strong pace throughout the race and was fighting right until the last lap with Fernando Alonso. Sixth is a very good result for us. Due to Esteban's grid position, we opted for a different strategy to allow him to attack at the end of the race. He did some good overtaking manoeuvres and drove well today, but it was always going to be difficult to fight for points starting from 20th. To be so close to fourth at the end of the race gives us more confidence that Brazil should be another good weekend for our team."

Dr Vijay Mallya, Team Principal and Managing Director: "Despite the promise we have shown at various points during the weekend, we leave the United States without the results we thought were possible. Our chances took a big hit on lap one with the accident for Adrian, which was a result of the contact with Maldonado. That put all our hopes onto Paul and we were looking to repeat the strategy we pulled off in Abu Dhabi by stopping only once. For a while we thought it was possible, but we couldn't achieve the tyre management we needed and had to pull him in for a late second stop. It was always going to be tough to score points today, but I'm optimistic that Interlagos next week will work more in our favour."

Xevi Pujolar, Chief Race Engineer: It was a good start by both cars but we quickly saw that Pastor had picked up some front wing damage following contact with Sutil on the opening lap. We had planned one-stop races for both drivers, but due to the damage we brought Pastor in much earlier for his switch to the prime tyres. With the higher track temperatures today we were being cautious in the early stages to manage the tyres, but the early data gathered from Pastor showed that our pace and consistency was good. After a good start Valtteri had a strong race, fighting hard when needed and making a great move to overtake Gutiérrez for eighth. We managed the gap to Rosberg behind us and Valtteri was able to push in the final laps to make sure he held the position. It was a great result for him to secure his first Formula One points and a well deserved end to the weekend for all the team. Despite finishing P17, Pastor also had a strong drive and had we not needed to make the early stop, there was potential for both cars to be up in the points today. It was a great improvement for us here in Austin and now we aim to continue the momentum to end the season on a high in Brazil.

Laurent Debout, Renault Sport F1 team support leader: Finally, a great race for the team with a perfect strategy, tyre management and pit stop that allowed us to deliver on the promise shown in the last two events. Valtteri did an amazing job to deservedly score his first points here, finishing in front of Rosberg and fighting with Alonso, and on pace alone. It would be mega to replicate this finish in the last race of the season next weekend, which will be the curtain call for the Renault V8 engine and unfortunately for the Williams-Renault partnership this time round. Ending both on a high is definitely the goal.

Max Chilton had a much more difficult task heading into the race as he would face a drive-through penalty imposed after yesterday's qualifying session, which needed to be served within the first five laps of the race. Losing so much time to the field so early in the race meant that he would not only struggle to close the gap but he would also hit the blue flag phase much sooner, and this indeed proved to be the case.

John Booth, Team Principal: "A fantastic result for both the Team and Jules today and one which is directly attributable to a lot of hard work both at the factory and at the track over the past few weeks. Up until yesterday's qualifying it is fair to say that we had experienced a very difficult weekend and the guys in the garage and the engineers have really put in a lot of effort to try and turn this weekend around. We saw the result of this teamwork paying off in the race for Jules and he made the most of this by driving an incredibly mature race. Max's race was clearly affected by the penalty he had to serve early on. His pace was very good and he recorded a faster lap than either of the Caterhams, which goes to show that that the gap at the end of the race is unrealistic and purely down to the increased amount of blue flags he saw. Both cars were aided by fantastic starts and the run into Turn 1 and for Jules this meant that he was able to stay ahead of van der Garde from start to finish. We had a good strategy on the pitwall and the pit stops worked well. Moreover, today's result is the fruition of some late developments that we have brought to the car thanks to the considerable efforts of the factory, who have achieved this performance increment whilst also trying to juggle the preparation of the 2014 car. This underlines just how much we are pushing for 2013, and for next season."

The biggest challenge facing the drivers throughout the Austin weekend was hugely variable track temperatures, ranging from 18 degrees centigrade on Friday to a maximum of 37 degrees centigrade for the race on Sunday. This had an obvious effect on tyre behaviour, making it very difficult for teams to predict wear and degradation - and therefore the strategy. Toro Rosso driver Jean-Eric Vergne was the only driver to start on the hard tyre from 14th on the grid, with the strategy also affected by a two-lap safety car period right at the beginning of the race: when the cars are at their heaviest and tyre wear is most significant.

The first pit stop of the race was for Sauber driver Esteban Gutierrez on lap one, who picked up a puncture due to debris from a start incident. He put on the hard tyre and ran with it to lap 36, when he went back on the medium. Another early stopper was Williams driver Pastor Maldonado, who went onto the hard compound on lap eight while accident damage to his car was repaired.

The first scheduled stop was Heikki Kovalainen for Lotus on lap 17, who put on the hard tyres and managed to make up three places by 'undercutting' his direct rivals, before losing time with a nose change.

Vettel pitted for his set of hard tyres from the lead on lap 27, handing the lead briefly to Lotus driver Romain Grosjean for three laps until the Frenchman pitted. Grosjean finished runner-up, six seconds behind Vettel, to equal his best-ever Formula One finish.

The top 12 finishers all used a one-stop strategy, with Ferrari's Felipe Massa the highest-placed finisher to adopt a two-stop strategy, ending up 13th.

Paul Hembery: "The variation in temperature we saw over the course of the weekend was quite remarkable, meaning that the drivers encountered different track conditions in every session. With such a wide spread of asphalt temperatures, you would ideally need more than just the two compounds stipulated in the regulations, but these were highly unusual circumstances and that was obviously not an option! As a result, the teams did not really have a proper read on the wear and degradation rates heading into the race. Nonetheless, most drivers chose a one-stop strategy as we expected, helped by the safety car period at the beginning of the grand prix, which then led to a race with less strategy and fewer variables than we have been accustomed to recently."