A fantastic win for Fernando Alonso today in front of a delighted home crowd.
This is Fernando’s second victory of the season, teammate Felipe Massa joined him on the podium coming in third just behind Kimi Raikkonen in the Lotus.
Driver feedback from todays Spanish GP
Fernando Alonso: “Even if this is the third time I’ve won a home race, the emotion is still very strong, as if it had never happened before. It’s nice to be able to give the whole of Spain this win, especially at a time when the country is in crisis and for many people, it’s not possible to come here to bring their support. I thank everyone for that support and the team for doing a fantastic job. After a far from easy qualifying, everything went perfectly, the start, the strategy, pit stops, tyre management. At the start, I had to make up some places but after passing the halfway point on the straight, there was no more room to do so. So I switched off the KERS, so as to use it in Turn 3, where I realised, after watching the GP2 race, that it was possible to attack around the outside. We had to bring forward the final stop because of a slow puncture which meant the left rear tyre was losing pressure in the final part of the lap, but fortunately, that had no effect on the final outcome. I think that with this car we can fight for the World Championship, because in five races we have finished second once and had two wins. From now on, we must manage to produce a consistent performance and score as many points as possible because we are well aware that we are not the quickest and to change that many people are working night and day at the track and in Maranello”.
Kimi Räikkönen:“Unfortunately it’s second place again so it’s not time to celebrate too much. The car felt good and we did pretty much all we could today, but we 
didn’t have the pace to challenge Fernando [Alonso]. I drove to the maximum and it’s good for the championship that Sebastian finished behind us. It’s nice to be on the podium for me and the team; let’s see what we can do in Monaco.”
Felipe Massa: “I am very happy with this podium. It was a really nice race and a fantastic result for the whole team. When you start from far back everything’s more complicated, but I managed to get away well and I immediately had a fantastic pace. On the first lap I pulled off a few overtaking moves thanks to the car being very competitive, which meant I could be aggressive, while at the same time looking after the tyres. Right to the very end, I thought it might be possible to fight with Kimi, but when I fitted my last set of Hard tyres, the ones we thought would be best as they were new, I had oversteer and began to lose the rear much earlier than I had expected. All the same, I am very pleased with our performance at this track. Now we head for Monaco, a completely different track where overtaking is very difficult. We know we don’t have the quickest car, but all we can do is continue to work with the same amount of effort, because I’m sure we are going in the right direction”.
Jenson Button: “That was an interesting race.“The lap to the grid was very slow, which hurt us, and my start wasn’t great. I had no grip, so Turn One was a mess. I was unlucky to end up 17th at the end of lap one. “We took the same approach as in China, adopting a different strategy from the others. To finish eighth show what a good job the team did with the strategy. I don’t know whether we’ve improved our package or not, but we certainly beat some cars that we possibly shouldn’t have 
beaten. “Still, it’s a positive that both cars finished in the points, and hopefully this’ll be the start of an upward trend. We gathered a lot of useful information today, and we’ll be working on that over the next few races in order to continue developing MP4-28. “I want to say a big thank-you for all the support I’ve received from the British fans this weekend. It’s great to see so many Vodafone ‘rocket red’ caps and T-shirts in the grandstands. Hopefully, we’ll have a full house at Silverstone and we’ll be stronger there. “There’s still a lot of work to do. It’s tough at the moment, but I’m pleased that we’re making the best of what we have.”
Sebastian Vettel:“I think we can be happy with fourth today. The first three cars were a little bit too fast for us and regarding looking after the tyres, they did a better job. We need to catch up; we’re not going the pace of the car, we’re going the pace of the tyres and obviously we do something to make the tyres wear more. We got some good points today, although of course we wanted more. The start was good, we then tried to hold on with a three-stop strategy, but had to change to four stops.”
Mark Webber: “We were struggling for the range and a bit of pace today, to be honest. The Ferraris and the Lotus were in a bit of a different league and that made it hard for us to compete today. I think we got the most out of what we had, particularly as by the first corner I was probably 14th or 15th, so to come back with that result was pretty good. We managed to get back in to the scheme of things, but we were always a little bit on the back foot in terms of tyre wear and ultimately pace. If you don’t have the pace, then you can’t have the magic strategy. I was happy with how I drove and we got some points, but it wasn’t the result we wanted.”
Nico Rosberg: I had a very tough race this afternoon. The start was good and I managed my first stint well to keep some of the quicker cars behind me. From there, I 
had to drive my own race and we began to go backwards as it made no sense to destroy my tyres by trying to stay ahead. We didn’t have the pace of the quickest cars today and there’s a growing gap to three teams ahead of us which we need to get on top of. We have a very quick car but we have to make it work for us in the race.
Lewis Hamilton: A difficult afternoon today and going backwards is never fun. We switched to a four-stop strategy during the race but I suffered with a lack of grip and balance throughout and we were never really able to get the tyres working. I know that everyone at the team is working so hard and we need to keep positive. I’m sure we will figure the problem out and we’ve got to keep pushing together to close the gap. I will be doing my best to help and encourage the guys.
Result:
1. Fernando Alonso (Spa) Ferrari 1hr 39mins 16.596secs
2. Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Lotus +00:09.338
3. Felipe Massa (Brz) Ferrari 00:26.049
4. Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull 00:38.273
5. Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull 00:47.963
6. Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes 01:08.020
7. Paul di Resta (GB) Force India 01:08.988
8. Jenson Button (GB) McLaren 01:19.506
9. Sergio Perez (Mex) McLaren 01:21.738
10. Daniel Ricciardo (Aus) Toro Rosso 1 lap
11. Esteban Gutierrez (Mex) Sauber 1 lap
12. Lewis Hamilton (GB) Mercedes 1 lap
13. Adrian Sutil (Ger) Force India 1 lap
14. Pastor Maldonado (Ven) Williams 1 lap
15. Nico Hulkenberg (Ger) Sauber 1 lap
16. Valtteri Bottas (Fin) Williams 1 lap
17. Charles Pic (Fra) Caterham 1 lap
18. Jules Bianchi (Fra) Marussia 2 laps
19. Max Chilton (GB) Marussia 2 laps
ret. Jean-Eric Vergne (Fra) Toro Rosso 14 laps
ret. Giedo van der Garde (Ned) Caterham 45 laps
ret. Romain Grosjean (Fra) Lotus 58 laps
