In the end it went well, but we definitely can’t go on like this. It can’t always be the case that my closest rival retires, as has happened in the last two races and we can’t think of carrying on to the end of the season with qualifying sessions like yesterday’s, when our performance was almost a second off the best. On track we manage to make the most of what we have, making few or no mistakes, thanks to great work from the team: for that alone we deserve to be where we are in the classification. Today, we pulled out an advantage over three of our four main competitors, which is positive. Probably this has been the most difficult circuit for us: we will find partially similar characteristics in Korea and Abu Dhabi, but I hope that by the time we get there, we will have found a way of improving the car. The start was definitely not one of my best of the season, but luckily I managed to take back my position from Di Resta immediately. At my first pit stop I immediately ran into traffic, but I had felt the tyres were beginning to degrade too much, so we opted to pit. On the Softs, we were more competitive, but then, after the second stop, the Safety Car came out, which favoured Button and Vettel. Just before the restart, the two leaders nearly collided and I lost a few metres because I was changing settings on the steering wheel. At that point, we didn’t know yet whether we would need to stop again, but when the second neutralisation came and some drivers pitted, then we decided to stay out, even if we weren’t sure if we would suffer with tyre degradation in the final stages, but that wasn’t the case and we made it comfortably to the podium. It was a very tough race physically, definitely the most tiring of the whole season: three hundred odd kilometres in this heat and such high humidity is very stressful.

That was a very tough and difficult race. There’s regret for what happened at the first corner, because without the puncture, I could certainly have finished a lot closer to Fernando, which would have been important for both championships. Once I had pitted, there was not much to work out: the aim was to try and make the tyres last as long as possible, while at the same time, going as quickly as possible. Luckily, the two Safety Cars brought the pack together again, but it’s also true that I would never have thought of doing such a long stint as my last one on the Supersofts. The performance of the 2012 today was definitely very different to what we had seen on the two previous days: it seemed like I was driving a different car! Even at the end, I tried to push to make up some places and it was only in the last two laps that I switched to thinking about just bringing the car home, given that the tyres were practically gone. The move on Senna? I think the rules are very clear and one just has to respect them: I was already alongside him and he had to leave me room, but instead he squeezed me into the wall. McLaren and Red Bull are very strong, but I think that today’s result is not so bad for the team: Fernando has managed to bring home a good points haul. Of course we must improve our performance, especially in qualifying.

Looking at our performance overall, we cannot be happy with it compared to that of our main competitors, because there is no point denying we were expecting better. Having said that, we saw that, even in difficult conditions, we managed to get the most out of our package, doing the best possible job on track – both Fernando and Felipe did very well – and in the garage and the pit wall. Race performance was better than what we had seen yesterday and we must calmly analyse all the data to understand how we can bring the sort of performance we see in the race into play in qualifying too. As far as the strategy is concerned, I think we made the right choices. At the second stop, we could not have gone longer with Fernando, because tyre degradation was getting too high. Unfortunately, the Spaniard came out behind a group of slower cars, but there was nothing else we could have done. The first Safety Car period was helpful for those who had yet to stop at that point, but at the same time, it also gave Fernando the possibility of running to the finish without stopping again, which was definitely positive. As for Felipe, bad luck immediately affected his race, but then he did a really good job of remedying the situation, proving to be very quick on the Soft as well as the Supersoft. I have to say his final stint was particularly good: 26 laps on the Option, with overtaking moves and a very aggressive drive was a very nice surprise. We need to study carefully the way this weekend went to understand how to improve our performance level for the coming races. We don’t have the quickest car, especially on this type of circuit and it’s down to us to try and give our drivers what they need to fight our strongest opponents on level terms.