Fernando: a dream day for you no doubt. You passed cars going into the first corner, looked in your mirrors and there was Lewis behind you.
Fernando Alonso: Yeah, it was, absolutely. I think one of our chances to win the race was to be first after the first corner and thanks to a good start, thanks to the car, I was able to arrive side-by-side into the first corner. I was on the inside part so I managed to be first and to be sure, to have my team-mate second makes things easier, for sure, to open a gap.
And thereafter, from the outside, it looked to be a relatively easy race for you.
FA: Well, it's always difficult here because I think the car keeps changing balance all through the stint. It's not the same with high fuel loads and new tyres as low fuel loads and old tyres. Over the weekend, we never did more than eight or ten laps with the tyres so you are always a little bit concerned about how the tyres will behave after 15 or 16 laps, so it's never easy. But for sure, to be never less than seven or eight seconds, for sure, you are much more relaxed.
We saw Ron Dennis out on the pit wall signalling you in for your first stop. Was there any lack of communication going on there?
FA: Yes, yes, I didn't understand but from lap ten to the first stop I had no radio so the same as Kimi in Australia and it seems a lucky thing to have in the race, because before the first stop I was lucky that I saw the pit board, I saw the arrow, so I came into the pits with some doubts, if the guys were there or not. Ron was telling me that the radio was off, obviously I knew already, but I think they adjusted something in the pit stop and then it worked OK for the rest of the race.
You were saying over the winter that it might take a while to start winning races for the new team but here you are, race two, middle of the podium.
FA: Yeah, it's absolutely fantastic and it's a wonderful surprise what we have achieved in such a short time. I remember the first test in December, only one day and then the new car in January, with the launch of the car in Valencia in the middle of January. A lot of work has been done inside the team, a lot of effort from everybody to be ready for the first race, but we never expected to be that competitive. It's something that is difficult to believe but we have to say big thanks to everybody.
Lewis, what a fantastic drive. Let's talk about the first few laps, your defence with Felipe Massa behind you and indeed the first corner.
Lewis Hamilton: Yes, that was the most difficult race I've ever had. To see two Ferraris behind you, two red blobs in the mirrors, knowing that they're slightly lighter than you and slightly quicker than you, it's very, very difficult to keep them behind. Felipe had a couple of moves, I think he tried into turn four a couple of times, but fortunately I was able to trick him into out-braking himself and get my car stopped and it was very fortunate that I was able to cut across and get back in front of him, to the point where he eventually went off, so I apologise for that but at the end of the day, we got the points, so it doesn't really matter. And then I had Kimi hunting me down for most of the race and phew, I just can't explain to you how tough it was. It's extremely hot in the cockpit, sweating a lot, I ran out of water halfway through the race, I didn't have enough water and so it was tricky, it was tricky, and I was getting hotter and hotter throughout the race. It would have been nice to have been a bit further ahead in the last stint but I had to keep pushing to the last lap and that's what I did. I didn't make any mistakes. I think the team did a fantastic job preparing the car this weekend. They work extremely long hours, I think longer than most other teams and also (a message) back to the factory: you've done a fantastic job so well done.
You had a brilliant middle stint to the race too, set fastest race lap. How did the car at that phase compare to later on. What was it like in the cockpit?
LH: I had radio communication with the team. They told me that Kimi had pitted and I had passed so… I couldn't see him in my mirrors and it was difficult to see the gap on the board. I was often looking at the gap towards Fernando and I noticed it was quite big, so I sort of made a mistake and thought that that was Kimi, but I later found that Kimi was only six seconds behind and they told me that he was catching by half a second a lap, so I just had to bite my tongue, dig as deep as I could while preserving the amount of energy I had, because it was so tough, and really just tried to stay in front and pull the car to the end and be as consistent as possible. I'm just overwhelmed.
Kimi, you must be very happy the way the weekend has gone for you, to be on the podium for the second successive race.
Kimi Raikkonen: Yeah, of course I'm happy to get some points but a bit disappointed how the race ended up. The whole weekend was quite difficult but I think we needed to compromise too many things and we lost too much speed because of those things, but it was one of those weekends where we needed to do what was most important and try to get as many points as we could. We just didn't have enough speed today and couldn't do much more.
