Sunday, 11 September 2011
“It was a good race: I finished and I got some points, so I can’t really complain.
“At the restart, Michael [Schumacher] was on my outside; I was looking at him in my mirrors, then, all of a sudden, the guys ahead had gone, so I missed an opportunity to slipstream Sebastian [Vettel]. So they caught me napping.
“We were a little bit slow on the straight today, which meant it was hard to get past Michael, who was faster along the straight even when I had my DRS activated. I had to really fight Schumacher, but the fact that I finished ahead of him meant everything was okay. That’s racing.
“The support we’ve had in Italy – the weather, the fans – has all been incredible and I’m really looking forward to coming back here again next year.
“I doubt it’s still possible to beat Sebastian for the title, but we’ll keep pushing. For now, I’m looking ahead to the flyaways – they’re going to be exciting and I’m really focused on getting some more wins for the team.”
MARTIN WHITMARSH
Team principal, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
“Today our cars were the quickest of the lot – Lewis posted fastest lap, while Jenson took second-fastest lap – but unfortunately our drivers didn’t get off to good enough starts. The result was that they spent much of the race stuck behind Michael [Schumacher], whose Mercedes-Benz was remarkably quick in a straight line and extremely ‘wide’ on the approaches to the corners.
“Meanwhile, Seb [Vettel] was able to pull away, which was deeply frustrating for us because we knew we had the pace to take the race to him, had our guys got off to better starts.
“But that’s motor racing: you’ve got to qualify well, start well and race well. Well, this weekend we qualified pretty well, we raced very well, but we didn’t start well enough.
“Even so, we scored 30 world championship points this afternoon, consolidating our second place in the constructors’ world championship and pulling out a margin of 71 points over our closest challenger.
“Now, we embark on a tough run of six fly-away races, starting in Singapore in two weeks’ time and ending in Brazil in late November. There are still a lot of points up for grabs, and we’ll be doing our damnedest to bag as many of them as we possibly can.”
Credit: Lewis Hamilton (www.lewishamilton.com)
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