Ferrari
United States Grand Prix – Austin, 25 October 2015
Kimi Raikkonen: “The first part of the race was more or less ok: the car felt pretty good all the time, I had the speed and I was able to fight with other cars. After the tires change I made a mistake, I pushed a bit too much, the rear end got loose, so I went off and hit the wall. The front of the car got stuck on the advertising board, I kept turning the wheels for a while, then I managed to get off and go back on the track. I had a slow puncture on my rear left tire, and I also damaged the right front end: we changed the front wing and the car was ok, but the brake duct had failed and the brakes got overheated, so I had to retire. It’s not very nice when you have a race ending like this: we have the right tools but we have to put things together, make no mistakes and achieve a proper result. Congratulations to Lewis and the whole team, he did the best job out of everybody and deserves to be the champion.”
Sebastian Vettel: “We tried to spoil Lewis’ party today! In the end maybe I should have taken more of a risk with Nico, but it was not possible. It is a shame, but let’s not forget where we started this year. Today it was another great race, a great recovery and the car was fantastic. I think you can’t ask for more if you start from P13. A good first lap helped a lot and after that we had the pace, especially changing to the dry tires in mixed conditions. We seemed to fly for a few laps, a couple of seconds quicker than everybody else. Maybe without the last safety car we could have won the race: but if ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts… It was a difficult race and we managed it very well. I can only say “grazie tante” to everybody on track and in the factory. So on one hand we are happy, but it is not a nice feeling when you are out of the fight. For the next year this gives us a boost, trying to do make progress. Hopefully we will give them a bigger challenge.”
Race
Pos.
Time
Gap
Laps
FL
L
RAIKKONEN
NC
51:08.772
DNF
25
1:46.186
24
Pit-stop
1st stop
Lap 19
New Soft
2nd stop
Lap 20
New Soft
VETTEL
3rd
1:50:56.084
+ 3.381
56
1:41.330
52
Pit-stop
1st stop
Lap 18
New Soft
2nd stop
Lap 27
New Medium
3rd stop
Lap 43
New Soft
Weather: air 19/20 °C, track 20/22 °C. Cloudy