Max Verstappen:
"It was a close race today. I didn't expect that the car would have that kind of pace at the beginning, which was nice and we were strong on the medium tyres. When we swapped to the hard tyres, it was a bit trickier to drive and more of a struggle to bring it to the end as tyres fell out of the operating window and we had really low grip. During the last ten laps I was really trying to survive on the tyres and managed to keep Lando behind, but it required a lot of focus as we were on the limit with the penalty. However, we managed to work through and take the win; I was definitely counting down the laps until the end and it was a great feeling when we took the chequered flag! If you look at where we were at the beginning of the weekend, this was an extremely good result. There is a bit of work to do and things to analyse but we are looking forward to Monaco."
Sergio Perez:
"We knew it was going to be a hard day today as the whole weekend was compromised from qualifying. Imola is a difficult track to overtake on so this was the maximum we could do today, especially we were struggling with traffic in the beginning on my first stint and on the hard tyres we had no margin to play around with the balance. We knew that McLaren were the fastest but Max had one of the best weekends I've seen from him in awhile, so a lot of praise for that and this was a great result for us. We have a few things we need to analyse and certainly some work to do as we head into the next race, but I'm looking forward to Monaco and hopefully we will continue our strong season and get some good momentum back."
Lewis Hamilton:
My race was generally good. I had one moment which cost me about five seconds, but my race pace was generally strong so I'm happy with how it went. I made a good start and that was important to get past Tsunoda. From there, I was able to extend my opening stint and that helped me make the one-stop strategy work.
We've taken a small step forward this weekend and we have improved. Unfortunately, that is slightly masked by the step forward others such as McLaren and Ferrari have taken. We will keep pushing to bring more updates that can add performance. Until then, we will make sure we are scoring as many points as we can.
George Russell:
We had some concerns over the Hard tyre being able to go to the end so made a second pit stop. Of course that means I lost a position to Lewis, but we were able to score one extra point as a team. It was quite a lonely race for us. We've slightly closed the gap to Red Bull and extended our advantage over the midfield. However, McLaren and Ferrari have also found similar gains so we are aiming to bring more performance and bigger steps as soon as we can. We're never going to be satisfied with P6 and P7, but this is where we are at the moment.
Everyone is super motivated and it's very inspiring to see. Everyone at Brackley and Brixworth are working so hard to bring improvements and it's great to see. We've got to keep on pushing. This weekend we maximised the package we had, and we will continue to aim to do that moving forward.
Charles Leclerc:
Today's race went well and we got even closer to our rivals. If we had qualified higher up, we could have presented our fans with an even better result. After changing on to the Hard tyres I had great pace and managed to make up ground on Lando (Norris) and Max (Verstappen,) but in the end the McLaren was quicker than us, although not by much.
Overall, there are plenty of positives to take away from this race: the upgrades worked as expected and we are more competitive. We must continue to work to close the gap, which although small, still separates us from the race winner.
Obviously, we dedicate this result and our performance to the tifosi who are the best fans in the world and they always support us come what may. I'm sure we'll soon be able to pay them back with a win.
Carlos Sainz:
I cannot be happy after what was a tough race for me. I need to review it with the team to understand why I've not been comfortable with the car both in qualifying and today pace-wise.
We will regroup tomorrow to start preparing for Monaco and hopefully we can get a better result there. The fight at the top is starting to get tight and we need to continue pushing.
Lando Norris
"Another great weekend for the team. I fought hard right until the very last lap but we just lost out a little bit too much to Max in the beginning. One or two more laps and it would have been beautiful - but just wasn't meant to be today.
"We've been competitive all weekend and I think we're at the point where we're able to fight Ferrari and Red Bull consistently. We must get used to that - the team is doing a very good job so it's great that fighting at the front is now business-as-usual. We just need to keep focused on improving. It's still a surprise to say it's frustrating to not win, but after last weekend and the improvements we made, it's what we should start to expect."
Oscar Piastri
"P4, a good day and I think that's the most we could have done. I just got stuck behind Sainz for the first stint but the team made a great strategy call and we managed to overtake by pitting. This weekend proves how far the team have come and we're confident we can keep taking the fight to the front. However today, track position was so important, so I am happy with our work."
Lance Stroll:
"It's good to come away from Imola with a couple of points. We elected to extend our first stint on the Medium compounds hoping for a Safety Car, but that never came and so we had to make up positions on track. That early tyre management meant I had the advantage of newer Hards towards of the end of the race, giving me the pace to pass Nico [Hülkenberg] and Yuki [Tsunoda] which was fun. This weekend has been tough though. We know we're not as competitive as we want to be, and we'll have to push hard to find the performance we're missing."
Fernando Alonso:
"It was a difficult day and weekend in general for us. We started from the pit lane and changed a few things on the setup of the car. It meant that we could gather a lot of data which we need to analyse over the next couple of days. We opted for the Soft tyres at the start of the race and we were hoping for a Safety Car to change things up. When nothing happened ahead of us, we looked to try a few different compounds out and essentially used it as a bit of a test session. We will need to regroup and put ourselves in the best position in Monaco."
Esteban Ocon:
"It was a difficult race today and, in the end, a tricky weekend overall. Ultimately, we lacked the pace to compete, and we did not have the speed to attack or defend, which limited our options in the race. We managed to hold position at the start but struggled to keep Lance [Stroll] behind in the beginning of the opening stint. Once he passed us, he pulled away and we could not maintain ground to the others. We tried to extend our first stint to benefit from any teams making a late pit-stop, but that did not happen. We were not in the fight this weekend, but we keep going and we go again next week in Monaco. I have great memories from last year, so we go there with a positive frame of mind."
Pierre Gasly:
"Unfortunately, we did not get it quite right today. We were not quick enough to compete higher up the grid and our intended strategy was too far away to pay off given how the race unfolded. In general, though, it felt like the car was less competitive than yesterday so we need to review as a team what we could have done better. Apart from that, the car felt more consistent at this track throughout the weekend so we need to make sure that we get the factors that we can control right. I'm looking forward to Monaco now, we have lots to analyse in the next couple of days to make sure we come prepared to the streets of Monte Carlo."
Alex Albon:
After the issues we faced with the wheel, we used the race as a bit of a test session to experiment with the brakes on long runs, playing around a bit in these conditions. I didn't feel the issue coming out of the pits, it was only when I took the pit limiter off and felt the vibration that I could tell something was wrong. I knew the tyre wasn't going to fall off as it was only going to a certain point and would stop so it was still safe, but I understand why I got the penalty.
Whilst today is a little painful, it's not all doom and gloom. We have a plan, and the midfield isn't scoring a tremendous number of points, so we're not falling away too much and can still catch up. At this point last year, we only had one point so were in a similar position. Whilst we don't have as big of an upgrade coming and our focus is on taking the weight out of the car, we'll still look to bring minor upgrades. We'll take the learnings we can and move our focus to Monaco.
Logan Sargeant:
Today was a bit of a struggle. There's very little overtaking here, you get stuck in DRS trains, there's lots of dirty air which makes it hard to keep the tyres in a good place, and I had a lot of blue flags in the second stint, so it can kind of stack up. I think when you look at the windows we had in clean air, the performance was not bad relative to the people around us, so that was a positive. I don't have too much to say about the race except I tried to keep my nose clean and get in the laps.
Daniel Ricciardo:
"I don't think anything went wrong with the start procedure, I felt like I did everything right, but unfortunately, losing that starting place did cost us the points in the race. We'll figure it out as a team, just because there's a bit of a lack of consistency there and we immediately dropped out of the points. Then during the race we were in a train of cars, and being there with the dirty air, it's a weakness at the moment for us. We'll keep looking at it. I think with the clean air our pace was okay and I was doing decent times, but as soon as we got in some traffic we felt like we struggled more. That midfield we're in it's all about small details. We work hard for the qualifying position, so it's important to be able to consolidate it at the start of the race. I think that if both Yuki and I stayed in front of Nico (Hulkenberg) at the start, we could've managed to stay there for the whole race, get on a little bit better with the pack and our race would have looked different. Let's reset now, it's been a couple of years now that I'm missing Monaco, so I'm looking ahead and I'm excited to go back there next week."
Yuki Tsunoda:
"At the end of the day, I'm happy I scored a point in front of our home crowd and people who came from the factory. I think our start slightly compromised our race because we lost a couple of positions to Nico (Hulkenberg). He was fast on the straights, so we didn't want to end up behind him which is why we pitted before him and earlier than planned. It was the crucial moment of the race, and I think we managed the strategy well and responded correctly to Nico. It meant we had to go long in our second stint and managing the hard tyre for the last 15 laps was challenging, but well done to the team for managing, that's positive. The start is the main topic that we need to improve on. We're working hard to take another step forward and we'll focus on extracting the maximum out of our package. Monaco is up next and I'm looking forward to it. We've been working hard and performing well, and I don't have a doubt that we will maximise our performance."
Valtteri Bottas:
"It's been a pretty quiet afternoon on my end. We tried something different with my strategy, in contrast to Zhou's, and stopped early. It was good to give it a try, as it worked okay for most of the race, although the second stint lasted a bit too long, and my tyres eventually dropped off over the last ten laps. It was always going to be slightly difficult to make progress on such a narrow track, especially as our starting position wasn't ideal. In terms of upgrades, we did make a small step here, and we could have realised some more of our potential in qualifying had it not been for yesterday's conditions, but of course we need to further improve to properly get in the mix for points, as we have seen with our main competitors. The team back home is putting a lot of effort into delivering the next set of new parts, which should be implemented over the next few races. We will also have something more track-specific for Monaco - that, of course, is a race of its own, where it's all about qualifying - it'll be important to get that right, to have a decent chance at points in the Principality."
Guanyu Zhou:
"Today's race was quite uneventful in the beginning but picked up some action later on. We were hoping for a safety car to really benefit from our strategy - and while that didn't happen, we still made it work, managed our tyres well, and gained positions. Unfortunately, most cars were on a similar one-stop strategy on a track where it's hard to overtake and, without any major incidents, we didn't get close to the points, especially since we still need to extract a bit more in terms of pace and performance. Next up is Monaco, and sometimes packages suddenly work better on a completely different track. The team keeps pushing, and we'll give it our all to be up there fighting for points in the upcoming races."
Kevin Magnussen:
"I think we had a decent day. We didn't get anything for free in terms of cars ahead having problems, so P12 for us meant we really earned that by overtaking people on track and fighting for it. It felt like a good race, but we just started too far back. We showed today that the pace was there, and we were gaining on our competition in the midfield, but our starting position that meant we didn't score points today."
Nico Hulkenberg:
"We got undercut by Yuki, so that was one position lost, and Checo in his Red Bull was coming through and there's no holding him back on much fresher tires on a different strategy. Frankly, I don't think we had quite enough pace, it feels like we were missing a little bit and the strategy to pit early made life quite hard. It was a long final stint and it was a struggle to find a good harmony and rhythm. I think it's confirmed now that we can compete in the midfield and that's great compared to last year. However, you get used to these nice things and you always want more, and I want to be fighting for points so we need to keep pushing."
