Q. Lewis, as you were saying an intense race. Something seemed to be happening to you all the way through. Either you were pushing somebody or somebody was pushing you.
LH: Yeah, it was an interesting race actually. Like Jenson was saying it was difficult to know how much to save your tires and how much to push, how much longer you had to go and how fast the guy behind you was and whether they were pushing or saving fuel or whatever. It was very, very challenging. It was the ultimate challenge for me at least of the whole year so far and I was really just trying to maintain the correct balance with the different switches that we have. Also again through traffic without losing too much time. Clearly Fernando could see when I was catching traffic and he would close the gap all of a sudden, so it showed he had great pace and it was then trying to get through the traffic without allowing him to pass. It was very, very difficult today. I would say the traffic was almost as bad as Monaco. It was very tricky but we managed to deal with it and it was a tremendous job from myself and Jenson and another one-two. The third one this year I think and the team truly deserved it as I think they have done a great job.
Q. Was the strategy fairly clear right from the start, especially given there wasn't a safety car?
LH: That was a bit of a surprise, no safety car. The first time for a long time with no safety car at this track. But clearly everyone was safe which is a good thing. I think strategy-wise I have no idea whether the team had planned that. I just knuckled down, kept my head down and tried to pull the gap and do the best job I can. Unfortunately I did lose some time in the pit stop. That is another time where we have lost time in the pit stop and lost another position, so it is important that we try to go away and fix that. But the second pit stop was very good. They did a great job there, which enabled us to get ahead of Fernando.
Q. In the closing stages there how much fuel were you having to save? Others were, but the lap times looked good?
LH: No, I had saved a lot of fuel in the mid part of the race and whilst I was behind Fernando, so I was able to push right to the end without any problems.
Q. Jenson, fifth early on and you came through and you were being pushed by Sebastian. What sort of race was it for you?
JB: It was a great race. It was a very enjoyable race. It is pretty tough racing around here anyway. It is very tough on tires. The start of the race for me I thought I would try and look after the option tire but it was very difficult with the Red Bulls shoved up behind me on prime tires. I pitted early as I just thought 'what's the point of staying on this tire.' I said to the team 'is there a clear space for me to drop in to' and they said 'yes,' so I pitted early. I came out and it was the right call as I had pulled on these guys a little bit. In that stint the car was working well again looking after the tires and the fuel. I thought the stint was going to be a lot longer than it was. It was basically just hanging onto these guys and waiting for the next pit stop and try to close in on them. It wasn't to be. I got traffic which slowed me down but then the last stint again just looking after the tires as it was such a long stint. It was longer than I expected. I had Sebastian up behind me pushing me very hard. I didn't want to go any quicker as I knew I would damage the tires and then when we hit traffic I made some good passes in traffic and pulled a five second gap on him and then I could focus my attention on catching up with Fernando. It was a really fun race. It is very difficult to judge when to push on the tires. I think I kicked in a little bit early on the last stint but it got me P2, so I am very happy with that. I have got to say a big thank you to the whole team. They have done a fabulous job this weekend. This guy was phenomenal in qualifying yesterday. I couldn't touch him, but it is good to finish close in the race and good to get some points.
Q. I believe you had a different race engineer for various reasons?
JB: Yeah, Jakob (Andreason) is poorly this weekend which is a shame. He did all the set-up work initially, so some of this result is down to him for sure. It is very difficult watching it on television. But today I had Phil Prew, who is the chief engineer who has worked with Lewis over the last few years. It was good and it is always interesting working with new people, new ideas, but I hope Jakob is well and hopefully we will see him very soon back at the circuit.
Q. What about the hotter temperatures? The track temperature was about ten degrees higher than we've seen so far this weekend.
JB: Yeah, the option was a little bit better than on Friday. The prime tire, again, was a touch better but still you couldn't drive flat out on the prime every lap. You got rear graining as you probably saw with quite a few cars out there. When I lapped Hulkenberg, his rear tires were shredded to bits. You still have to look after that. So it was an exciting race from that point of view. It was great to be up at the front, and watching the fight between these two was also fun and I think that for the viewers this was a great race. It comes down to the tires being a little bit more difficult than normal, different pit stop strategies and different tires to start the race and it's made for a hell of a race.
Q. Fernando, good to see you up there on the rostrum. Is this something that we can expect in the future or is this a one-off?
FA: I think we want to be World Champions, so hopefully we can be here more often.
Q. Have you taken a step forward this week?
FA: Definitely. In Turkey we were a little under-competitive there. We were too slow, just Q2 in Turkey and then in the race we were like 50 seconds behind the McLarens, so here we were fighting wheel to wheel, so it was definitely a step forward. The characteristics of the track seem to be OK for us as well, so we just took this opportunity to be on the podium, to be in front of Red Bull and fight for the win. So it's definitely been a very positive weekend for us and I am looking forward because I think this result will be a big motivation for the team.
Q. Tell us what happened when you lost second place to Jenson?
FA: I think we had some people in front of us; it was a Virgin I think and a Hispania. We thought the Hispania was letting us go in turn six but he didn't, he was just on a different racing line, so when he went back to the normal one we just had to brake and then he saw us a little bit late and we exited turn six very slowly; I exited turn six very slowly because of that and Jenson took the opportunity.
Q. And how were the tires?
FA: I think the tires were difficult for everybody. The soft tires were difficult at the beginning with a heavy car, just eight or nine laps and then you lose a lot of performance, so we all stopped around that lap and then with the prime, as Jenson said, it was not easy either, you just needed to take care of the rear graining but as it sometimes happens, our car is very gentle on tires, so for most of the race I was quite comfortable with the pace.