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Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean returned
to the podium with Kimi taking second and Romain
third in a fast-paced German Grand Prix at the
Nürburgring. Kimi finished just 1.008 seconds
behind race winner Sebastian Vettel, who took
his first home Grand Prix victory. Kimi remains
in third position in the Drivers’ Championship
with 116 points, but closes the gap from
Fernando Alonso (123) to seven points. The team
was the highest scoring in the Constructors’
Championship today, remaining in fourth place on
157 points, with Ferrari on 180 in third.
Kimi started from P5 with a scrubbed set of soft
tyres, changing to new medium compound tyres on
laps 8 and 24 and a final set of scrubbed soft
tyres on lap 49.
Romain started from P4 on a scrubbed set of soft
tyres, changing to new sets of medium compound
tyres on laps 13, 24 and 40.
Kimi Räikkönen, P2, E21-03
"We wanted to win; we couldn’t, but we did score
the most points here."
“We had a pretty good last stint of the race,
but the cars are close on performance so it’s
difficult to overtake. Maybe some more laps
would have helped us, but the race is only 60
laps so you have to do your best with that.
After my first stop I was stuck behind a
Mercedes for a while, but once I was past the
car was pretty good. After the safety car three
of us were able to pull away, but we were too
close on speed to change the order. It was a
good day for the team. Of course, we wanted to
win; we couldn’t, but we did score the most
points here. The warmer temperatures definitely
helped us, so let’s hope for some more hot
weather in Budapest.”
Romain Grosjean, P3, E21-02
"Everything went right today and it was
pretty special when I was leading the race."
“After some difficult races, everything went
right today and it was pretty special when I was
leading the race and returning to the podium is
naturally a good thing. My car felt great on the
first stint with the soft tyres and it’s clear
that the summer weather really suits us.
Hopefully we’ll have a long summer now in Europe!
Letting Kimi past at the end of the race was the
sensible thing to do as we were on different
strategies and he had more of a chance of going
for the win than I did at that point. We didn’t
know which tyre would be the best at the end of
the race, so we didn’t put all our eggs in one
basket.”
Eric Boullier, Team Principal
"We need to continue like this to make up for
lost ground in both championships."
"That was a very good race from the team which
validates all the hard work which has been going
on back at Enstone, so we thank everyone at the
factory for their efforts. After three difficult
weekends, being on the podium was exactly what
we needed. We need to continue like this to make
up for lost ground in both championships. The
E21 worked very well today and both Kimi and
Romain drove superbly. We had a good strategy
from the pit wall, some fantastic pit stops, and
were it not for losing some time behind both
Mercedes, it’s possible that we could have won
today. I think we’ll have to ask Pirelli to keep
this weekend’s specification of tyres for the
rest of the season.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director
"We’re very happy to be back on the podium again."
“We’re very happy to be back on the podium again
after a short spell of bleak races. Both cars
ran faultlessly from start to finish and it did
look like we could be able to take the fight to
Sebastian [Vettel] but ultimately we didn’t
quite manage it. Kimi was held up by Lewis
[Hamilton] after his first pit stop but came
back fighting at the end of the race. Romain did
a fantastic job managing his first set of tyres
which enabled him to make some great gains. We
did consider running Kimi on a two-stop strategy
but we could see the tyre performance dropping.
We expected slightly more performance from his
final set of soft tyres, but he was right with
Seb at the end.”
Ricardo Penteado, Renault Sport F1 Team
Support Leader
“A great race from both drivers, with incredible
pace. It was a shame that the traffic pushed us
back from the outright win but a double podium
is still a great result, and more than we
expected going into the weekend. Engine-wise,
it’s been a good Grand Prix, although
temperatures were hotter than expected. The
result shows the engine-chassis package is back
to its best and we’ll look to keep this going to
the next race.”
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