Red Bull endure tough race to 4th and 5th
Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber finished today's Spanish GP in 4th and 5th places. Vettel lacked a bit of durability on the tyres to hold on to his third place at the start while Webber was happy to recover from a troubled start.
Sebastian Vettel, #1, 4th: “I think we can be happy with fourth today. The first three cars were a little bit too fast for us and regarding looking after the tyres, they did a better job. We need to catch up; we’re not going the pace of the car, we’re going the pace of the tyres and obviously we do something to make the tyres wear more. We got some good points today, although of course we wanted more. The start was good, we then tried to hold on with a three-stop strategy, but had to change to four stops.”
Mark Webber, #2, 5th: “We were struggling for the range and a bit of pace today, to be honest. The Ferraris and the Lotus were in a bit of a different league and that made it hard for us to compete today. I think we got the most out of what we had, particularly as by the first corner I was probably 14th or 15th, so to come back with that result was pretty good. We managed to get back in to the scheme of things, but we were always a little bit on the back foot in terms of tyre wear and ultimately pace. If you don’t have the pace, then you can’t have the magic strategy. I was happy with how I drove and we got some points, but it wasn’t the result we wanted.”
Christian Horner, Team Principal: “A tough race. Fourth and fifth places obviously weren’t the target going into the race, but the way it panned out it was obvious that tyre degradation was going to be a key factor. We didn’t quite have the pace today but we still managed to score some strong points. We made four pit-stops with both cars, saw some great work in the pit lane and recorded a succession of very fast stops. It was a good recovery after a difficult first lap for Mark.”
Thierry Salvi, Renault engine support: “We would have liked to have finished the race a couple of positions higher of course, but this year it is difficult to be aggressive as you have to manage tyre wear throughout the race. This in turn limits how you configure the engine and the options available to you. All the same, it was positive to finish fourth and fifth, which gives us a decent points haul from the weekend.”
