Redbull Austrian GP Review

“I do love a fight and Lewis came out of nowhere in the last few laps. It felt like the gap was stable and then within a handful of laps he was catching me pretty rapidly. I then had two laps to go and had to defend which made it a pretty exciting race for me. To have good speed around here in dry conditions was a pleasant surprise for us. I had Seb in front of me pretty much for the whole race and I know that his long runs on Friday looked quite a lot quicker than ours so we didn’t really expect to have a similar race pace to him or Mercedes today. Just to hold Lewis off, have a fight, defend and come out in front was cool. Another podium is pretty sweet. I enjoyed it up there. Silverstone is going to be great with these 2017 cars so I’m looking forward to that and I’m sure we’ll have a lot of Poms out there next weekend.”

“We had a clutch issue at the start of the race. I could feel on the formation lap that it wasn’t great and then at the start it failed which triggered the anti-stall as I tried to launch. I pulled away after losing many positions and tried to stay out of trouble in to turn one but I got hit on the rear tyre. Because of the hit the clutch over engaged, braking the bearing in the clutch, so I had no drive. The boys are all working very hard and there is no blame on anyone, we have just had a lot of bad luck recently and I have to try and stay positive. It’s definitely not nice at the moment and I’m very disappointed again but it’s also very important to keep pushing everyone forward as there are still many races to go. We just hope that the next race will be better. I also feel disappointed for all the Dutch fans as they have travelled a long way. I wanted to put on a show for them but I could not even complete one corner today. We will of course try to do better at Silverstone.”

CHRISTIAN HORNER, Team Principal: “A fantastic race from Daniel after making a good start, including a good passing move on the fast starting Haas of Romain Grosjean. He then drove a very disciplined race; consistently and competitively. He came under serious challenge from Lewis in the closing laps but defended firmly and fairly and it was great to see him on the podium at our home grand prix, for his fifth consecutive podium. Max’s car unfortunately went into anti-stall on the grid which caused a slow getaway. He was out of positon and then got collected after an incident between Daniil Kvyat and Fernando Alonso which turned him round at the first corner and thereafter had an issue which looks like the clutch. We’ll have to get the car back to understand if it was a result of the incident or what happened off the start line. It’s been great to see such a strong crowd at the Red Bull Ring supporting the Austrian Grand Prix, it looks like it’s been a really enjoyable weekend for all of the fans.”