2013 Monaco GP Post-Race Driver’s Quotes, Translated

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Fygar

Three cheers for secret tyre testing! Confidential to HAM: I hear your teeth gritting from here. Dude, stop spending money on studio time and get yo’self some acting classes! . . . And some new pants.

Mercedes
Nico Rosberg (1st)
“Monaco is such a special place to win and it just feels amazing today. It was my childhood dream to win this race and to do it in a Silver Arrow on the streets where I have lived all of my life is fantastic. I can’t quite believe it has happened yet and it will probably take a while to sink in. Thank you to the team for the car that we had this weekend and it’s good to have been able to show the same level of performance on Sunday and convert our pole position. The whole weekend went pretty much to plan, even though qualifying was tough with the weather conditions. I didn’t have the best start today which meant Lewis and Seb got pretty close but after the first corner, I was able to set my own pace. Then it was just a case of keeping a cool head through all the incidents and the team did a great job of keeping me in touch with what was happening. Thank you to everyone here today and back at the factories in Brackley and Brixworth. I hope this win today is the first of many more to come for us.”

ROS – “I wish every race were at Monaco! The key to our success today coughcoughasidefromsecrettyretestingcoughcough is that you have to be loonier than a taco-deprived Mexican to try to pass on this track. So, as long as we have every race here, we will totally kick-ass! Hey! Wait! What are you guys doing?! What?! Packing everything up and shipping it to where!? CANADA?! Fuck.”

Lewis Hamilton (4th)
“It’s been a great weekend for the team and I’m really happy for everyone. Big congratulations to Nico, he’s been awesome all weekend here and really deserves that victory. From my side, this weekend hasn’t really been the best and we didn’t make the most of the opportunity for a one-two finish today. When the safety car came out, I needed to maintain a gap so we didn’t get delayed with the double pit stop but unfortunately the gap was too big and we lost out to the two Red Bulls. That’s motor racing and these things happen sometimes. It’s the tightest track in the world here and virtually impossible to overtake unless you are much quicker than the car in front so there was nothing I could do to improve my position. But it’s great for the team to have achieved our first victory of the season and I hope we can carry through the performance we showed here to Montreal.”

HAM – “Does anybody else see how I’m cursed?! Even when these assholes do a fast pit, they fuck me over with the timing of the goddamn thing. I was fucking late for everything today because I had to practice my “Happy-For-Nico-and-the-Team” face in front of the mirror for, like, three fucking hours. I beat Roscoe for a while and even that didn’t make me feel better!! I thought about praying but, then, I had this moment of clarity where I looked back at the last few years of my life and especially the last few races. I thought about the secret tyre testing and how that was a sin. Then I realized that I lose when I sin and I lose when I’m virtuous. It hit me, then, that there is no fucking god or, if there is a god, he fucking hates me and all the dogs my agent forces me to own to make me seem likeable will never change anything anywhere ever.

I am so totally driving like PER in the next race. Bless”

Red Bull
Sebastian Vettel (2nd)
“Overall I’m happy and pleased with the result, we know that it’s very difficult to overtake here. Congratulations to Nico, he did a very good job and had a very controlled race; I think he had the pace and the tyres to respond whenever we tried to get a little bit closer to him. I had a fantastic start, but there was no room! I think I could have gone past both Mercedes, but there was no space and I had to lift. Then Mark came and it was very tight into the first corner. I was a bit surprised by the slow pace of the opening laps – usually you expect two silver arrows in front of you, but they were more like buses today going for a cruise on the first couple of laps. But, the strategy for them was clear and they did a very good job. It was a good strategy from our team to get past Lewis. It was hard with the restarts, but we can be happy with the result. It was a good achievement by the team; we seem to like this place. Congratulations to everyone and thanks to all our partners – two cars on the podium is very good.”

VET – “All you fuckers are too fucking slow and you all get in my way all the fucking time. My emoto-chip is continually overheated by the silly human fact that I have to race against other drivers in order for the humans to appreciate how awesome and fast I am when, really, It should just be me, setting fastest laps, with no unnecessary data input, like, for example, FROM OTHER FUCKING SLOW-ASS DRIVERS! GAH!”

Mark Webber (3rd)
“First of all congratulations to Nico, it’s a very special place to win here and he had a seamless weekend; that’s what you need to do here. Even though he started in the lead, you still have to pull it off so well done to him. For us, we knew we were a little bit against it starting on the second row, but I got an absolutely incredible start and it’s sod’s law that it’s the shortest run into the first corner here. Seb and I had nowhere to go, so we were lifting while Nico and Lewis looked like they had tricky ones. We will save some of those starts for future reference! Then after that it was basically about saving the tyres and making the one-stop work for us. It was predictable that if the race was going to stack up, then the two-stop was not really an option as you could have come back into traffic. We had to go pretty long and all the drivers were nursing the tyres – it was nice to get Lewis on the stops.”

WEB – “I love how fucking easy it is to appear like a decent, reasonable member of society standing next to VET. How ’bout that start, everybody!? Who’s your daddy now? Amazing things happen when you stomp your foot on the gas pedal as those lights flash red! I gotta remember that for the rest of the season!”

Force India

Adrian Sutil (5th)
“Fifth place feels fantastic. It’s just the result we needed and I’m very happy right now. The car felt very good and we made the most of the chances that came our way. It was difficult to move forward in the first half of the race when I was stuck in the train of cars, but the red flag opened up some more opportunities. It meant that everybody was on the same sprint strategy until the end of the race. I noticed that the hairpin was an area where there was a chance to overtake so I tried it with Jenson and it worked. Then I did the same with Fernando and it worked once again. So I think I showed that overtaking is possible in Monaco. The team did an excellent job all weekend and we definitely deserved this result today.”

SUT – “Did somebody say ‘Australia’? I had almost forgotten how good this shit feels! Now, if I can just keep my over-inflated “I showed that passing at Monaco” ego from blinding me, maybe I won’t go into a another six-race suckfest! Seems unlikely.”

Paul di Resta (9th)
“Given where we started we went with an aggressive strategy and it probably would have paid off without the safety cars. The pace was strong, but I was stuck behind lots of traffic in the early part of the race. I managed to pass a few cars going into turn one, but towards the end of the race the cars were more bunched up and it was not so easy. I was stuck behind Vergne after the restart and I had one good chance to overtake, but he defended very well. Fortunately with the cars ahead battling and making contact I made up some positions and scored a couple of points. So after the disappointment of yesterday, the boys did a great job and it’s good to continue my run of finishes in the points.”

RES – “Force India, fucking up shit in your area! Force India, fucking up shit in your area! Bo knows this and Bo knows that but Bo can’t race F1, so Bo don’t know jack! Yeah, yeah, y’all! I’m totally already counting our constructor dollars! First thing I’m going to do is take a bath in Bernie’s twenty Euro notes. Then I’m changing the livery to ‘Mother-Fucking Force India’!”

McLaren

Jenson Button (6th)
“Things weren’t looking very good initially, but the Monaco Grand Prix is one of those races where you need to hang in there until the very end, because anything can happen – and today it did. My opening laps were good – I overtook Adrian [Sutil] and tried to have a go at Fernando [Alonso] at the hairpin. I tapped his rear wheel, so I wasn’t really paying attention when Checo put a really good move on me out of the tunnel under braking for the Harbour Chicane. After the restart, Adrian also made a really good move on me into the hairpin – I didn’t actually think it would be possible because I’d tried it on Fernando earlier and it didn’t work. Then, in the last few laps, Checo and Kimi [Raikkonen] tangled, and suddenly there was a battle behind them because they were circulating slowly in their damaged cars. So I took the opportunity to jump up the inside of Fernando at Rascasse, which was quite fun, and came home sixth. It was a pity that Checo’s late-race retirement meant we couldn’t score more heavily today – that would have been a big boost for the team – but I bagged a decent number of points, and our pace in clear air was good, so there are positives we can take away from today.”

BUT – “Fuck, I wish being cute equalled being fast. I also wish it meant I didn’t have to have an asshole for a team mate. I will say: having to act nice around Hamilton made me good at acting bummed out about Checo’s tangle with Kimi. In reality, I almost fucking crashed after I took my hands of the wheel to clap happily like a little girl. Fucking Checo.”

Sergio Perez (16th)
“I’d had a great race – I’d been overtaking cars through the afternoon – but in my opinion Kimi didn’t leave me enough room when I tried to pass him as we exited the tunnel, and as a result I got squeezed into the wall on the entry to the Harbour Chicane. That was a real shame – I’d overtaken both Jenson and Fernando there, and Jenson had overtaken me there too, but I couldn’t have avoided the crash with Kimi. Of course, any passing manoeuvre at Monaco is risky, but, at the end of the day, you have to leave each other a little room. As a result of our contact, my car’s brake ducts were affected and my front brakes overheated – in fact I basically ran out of brakes. It’s particularly frustrating to retire from a grand prix in which you’ve driven hard and fast, especially when you’re so near to the finish. So, all in all, I’m extremely disappointed – for the team as much as for myself.”

PER – “Fucking passing people is like fucking crack, man! At first, just passing BUT was fine. That was enough: being all agro and going after the shit even when it was nuts to do so against my own team mate. But, then I needed more and more just to stay high. Pretty soon I was seeing day light everywhere! All the gaps were places to pass, all the spaces were spaces for my car! I was speed itself and my car was an angel. dancing on the heads of tiny, little Dia de Los Muertos skulls. Then, fucking Kimi sent me a .28 millisecond treatment program, located between his icy fist and a cement wall and I’m all better now. I guess I just wish there was a monetary award for ‘Most Hated by Other Drivers, Driver’. . . Maybe Pastor has his lying around from last year.”

Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal
“Jenson drove well all afternoon to finish sixth and thereby score a useful eight world championship points. Checo would also have claimed a decent haul of world championship points but for a coming-together with Kimi that compromised the efficacy of his brake ducts and eventually caused him to lose his braking. He’s disappointed, understandably, but the up-side is that he was combative and entertaining on almost every lap – and, more important still, he was very quick. McLaren has won the Monaco Grand Prix 15 times in the past – considerably more often than any other marque – so of course we’re disappointed not to have been able to notch up win number 16 here today. But we were in the mix throughout, and it’s clear that MP4-28’s developmental trend is positive. Our next race will be the Canadian Grand Prix, which we’ve won 13 times in the past, which puts McLaren first-equal in the all-time Canadian Grand Prix win tally alongside Ferrari. We’re not predicting Canadian Grand Prix win number 14 for McLaren in a fortnight’s time, but undoubtedly we’ll be giving it 100% between now and then in our efforts to make ourselves as competitive as we possibly can.”

Translation Services – I left this Whitmarsh quote in because, on the face of it, I doubt it could get any funnier.

Ferrari
Fernando Alonso (7th)
“Unfortunately today we didn’t manage to have a good pace, as is usually the case on Sunday and I wasn’t pessimistic about not being competitive yesterday, because so far, things have always improved in the race. That wasn’t the case today, maybe down to a lack of traction, a problem we had seen before in Bahrain. This race came at the end of a weekend that overall was difficult, starting with a qualifying that left me in the middle of a group of drivers who had nothing to lose. If I had not cut the chicane, I would not have been able to avoid colliding with Perez and the same thing happened at Loews with Sutil. As for what Sergio did, I don’t have much to say, his approach reminds me of my own in 2008 and 2009, because when you are not fighting for the championship, you can take more risks, while for me today, it was important to finish the race and bring home as many points as possible. That approach has allowed me to close a bit on Kimi in the classification and even if the gap to Vettel has grown a bit, we know that sooner or later, an opportunity will come to close up on him too. Today’s outcome doesn’t bother me in terms of the next round in Canada, because we have to consider Monaco a law unto itself, with a different set-up and unusual strategy as well as being a place where it is almost impossible to overtake. We know there is still much to do to improve, but we are looking ahead with confidence.”

ALO – “Was there a race today?”

Felipe Massa (DNF)
“Today my race ended on Lap 28 after an accident at the Ste Devote corner, just as happened yesterday morning in the third free practice session. I was taken to hospital for all the precautionary checks and luckily everything is in order. I’m alright, I’ve just got a slight pain in my neck, but nothing serious. Now I will look to get in shape and be back 100 percent for the Montreal race. All I want to do is put this bad weekend behind me and think about doing well in the rest of the season.”

MAS – “Does anyone have the number of a good sports psychologist?”

Toro Rosso
Jean-Eric Vergne (8th)
“In some ways, it was rather a boring race, as I never had a clear track ahead of me! All the same, it’s always exciting to race at Monaco, especially when you score points. In the closing stages, Sutil did a good job in front of me passing Jenson and Fernando at the hairpin, but I was coming up behind and couldn’t get past as of course they blocked me. It was a good race of course, finishing eighth and picking up four more points. After some unfortunate races earlier this season, I said good luck and bad luck come round in equal measure and today everything went well for us. On top of that, it was clear that our car was very strong today and in fact I set my best lap really early on with a lot of fuel, as the rest of the time I was in the middle of the pack which was frustrating, as my car was faster than those ahead of me. I’m pleased to be eighth, but I am looking forward to doing better in the coming races.”

VER – “Does anyone have the number of a good psychologist?”

Daniel Ricciardo (DNF)
“My start off the line was fine and I decided to go for the inside as I saw the usual brake locking up ahead and thought that would be the best place to go. But there was a bit of a road block and Bottas was able to go round the outside of me which cost me a position. In the first stint, I struggled on the Prime tyre and after the stop, I was better on the Option, but from then on I was stuck in the pack. As for the crash, I could see that Grosjean had got a good run out of the tunnel and that he was close, so I defended my line and the next thing I knew he was over the back of me. I haven’t seen it on a TV yet, but at the moment I believe it was a misjudgement on his part and a costly one that was quite dangerous, even if we are both okay. This race can be frustrating, as I was in a train, but I didn’t have the pace to move forward. Now we need to move on and try and make a step forward for Canada.”

RIC – “Does anyone have the number of a good psychologist that I can give to GRO?”

Lotus
Kimi Raikkonen (10th)
“It was a really disappointing day. Because of one stupid move from Sergio [Perez] we’ve lost a lot of points to Sebastian [Vettel] in the Championship and you can’t afford to lose ground like that. He hit me from behind and that’s about all there is to it. If he thinks it’s my fault that he came into the corner too fast then he obviously has no idea what he’s talking about. It’s not the first time he’s hit someone in the race; he seems to expect people to be always looking at what he might do, then move over or go straight on if he comes into the corner too quick and isn’t going to make it without running into someone. Not the ideal weekend but there’s nothing we can do about it. At least we got one point back at the end.”

RAI – “I hope fucking PER realizes that DNF-ing is only the beginning of his nightmares. I’m going to have the ice dragons send a message to Ajatar, the evil spirit of the forests. His demonic ass is going to visit little Checo in his dreams, take him across the dark river of Tuonela and force him to watch telenovelas until his fucking brain melts out of his ears.”

Romain Grosjean (DNF)
“Daniel [Ricciardo] seemed to be really struggling with his rear tyres and they looked to have a lot of graining. I’d been following him for almost all of the 61 laps but I was caught out by him braking early in the middle of the circuit and there was nowhere for me to go. It’s a frustrating end to the weekend, but the real damage was done in qualifying when I didn’t get through to Q3. That was Daniel again who I was held up by, but it certainly wasn’t my intention to end my race in the back of his car! Now we just press the reset button and head to Canada hopeful of a better weekend all round.”

GRO – “Blame the tyres? Check. Blame another driver? Check. Blame the tyres on another driver’s car? Check. Blame the driver up whose ass I drove for my qualifying issues? Check. Let’s see. . . . . what have I forgotten. . . ? I l feel like I’m forgetting something. . . Don’t I usually blame one other thing. . . ? What? Oh, I can’t blame the car? Why not? Huh? There aren’t any chassis left for me? I broke them all? Fuck.”

Sauber
Nico Hulkenberg (11th)
“We couldn’t expect any miracles today, and yesterday we weren’t in the top ten either. Today we just lacked speed throughout the race. Unlike most of the other drivers, I started on soft tyres at the re-start, which was ok in the beginning. But, after another Safety Car, the tyres never came back to life again. The rears especially degraded a lot. When I got out of the car I could see the steel belt, so it’s no wonder the pace wasn’t good enough anymore. It’s a shame, as that point would have been ours.”

HUL – “Are we still blaming the tyres for everything? Or should I be tying this around PER’s neck somehow?”

Esteban Gutierrez (13th)
“It was very challenging to bring the car back home without any scratches or a crash. The first Safety Car compromised our strategy and in the end we just had to make the best out of that situation. We couldn’t expect to score points, but I did my best to use every opportunity I had to gain positions. Nevertheless, it was also important to not go over the limit and finish the race. I had a good re-start and was able to fight, but one of the points where we have to improve is the top speed in order to be able to fight for positions. It was tough with Williams in front and Lotus behind. On the other hand, I need to work so I can cope better with changing conditions in qualifying.”

GUT – “Note to self: start telling everyone I’m from Guatemala, then respond with, ‘I know, I know! I can’t believe it either!’, when they trash-talk Sergio.”

Williams
Valtteri Bottas (12th)
“It was difficult to overtake in the race today and even though sometimes we felt like we had the pace, we couldn’t make the moves we wanted. There was a lot of action in an eventful race so I was happy to bring the car home. We need to keep pushing because Montreal will be a track that is easier to overtake, so we need to ensure we have the speed to attack and defend.”

BOT – “Whew! Glad that shit is over!”

Pastor Maldonado (DNF)
“It was an unfortunate incident today with the Marussia car and the impact was quite big. Fortunately I am ok and the stewards took immediate action. We need to move on from a disappointing weekend but I’m looking forward to the next race in Canada, where we will be continuing to demonstrate the improvements in the car.”

MAL – “I like racing in Canada. Everyone’s really nice and I can spell the country’s name without having to look it up on Google Maps.”

Marussia
Max Chilton (14th)
“Overall I’m pleased with a positive conclusion to the race after what has been a difficult weekend for us. I fought hard in the latter stages to ensure we had something good to take away from Monaco and naturally I am very happy that I was able to get past Van Der Garde on the penultimate lap for 14th. With regard to the accident with Pastor, Esteban made a late lunge into the chicane and I could see he was locked up so I had to take action to avoid him, which meant missing the chicane. I rejoined coming out of Turn 11 and the apex to Turn 12 was fast approaching. I was aware that someone was behind me but not alongside me. The stewards determined a drive-through penalty for me and I accept that decision. After the race I went to see Pastor to check he was okay. The incident made for a difficult rest of the race but all I could do was concentrate on the best result for the Team and, problems aside, I think we have to be pleased with the end result.”

CHI – “GUYS! HOLY SHIT! MONACO! I GOT SO CAUGHT UP IN THE HISTORY AND GLORY AND SHIT THAT I TOTALLY STOPPED PAYING ATTENTION! I FEEL TERRIBLE ABOUT HITTING PASTOR BUT, AT LEAST I HIT SOMEONE THAT NOBODY LIKES, AM I RIGHT? I HEARD ALL THE OTHER DRIVERS ARE TAKING UP A COLLECTION TO GET ME TO BUMP INTO SERGIO NEXT WEEK. IT’S A LOT LIKE HAVING FRIENDS! GLAD TO BE HERE!”

Jules Bianchi (DNF)
“After a tough weekend here in Monaco I was hopeful that we might have the opportunity to turn things around in the race, but it was not to be, unfortunately. On the grid at the start I had an electrical problem and couldn’t select gear, so I had to start from the pit lane. It was a bit worrying but at least I could start. For that early part of the race I was right with Max but I had to think about looking after the tyres and hope that the race would come to me. After Maldonado hit the barrier in the accident with Max, the barrier came back out at me and my nose was damaged, so I had just pitted when the Red Flag came out. I was lucky that the damage was only limited to the nose and I could continue with the race. After that I was just looking to bring the car home, but I had a failure of the right front brake disc and that took me out at Ste Devote. It’s a big shame but we have learned a lot I’m sure from some of the problems we had this weekend.”

BIA – “If learning is crashing and DNF’ing, I earned my fucking PhD this weekend.”

Caterham

Giedo van der Garde (15th)
“That was a pretty crazy race! I made a good start from 15th but then Maldonado hit me, damaging the floor and meaning I had to come straight in for a new nose on lap one. I rejoined in 22nd and at that point, even though I had good pace and was catching the pack up again, it looked like my race was over, especially after losing KERS on lap 10. We were able to reset KERS and then Monaco did what it always does, and when the safety car came out for Massa’s crash I was able to unlap myself and get back into the action. In the car it felt like I couldn’t have any less luck, but then on lap 45 I was with Chilton, Bianchi and Maldonado when they had their incident. I didn’t really see what happened between them, but obviously the red flag gave me a chance to start again, this time from 18th. From the restart, on soft tyres and with 28 laps to go, I was holding position in 17th after Chilton’s drive-through and then the second safety car came out and I moved up to 14th when a couple of cars ahead pitted. I was right behind Bottas, in front of Gutierrez, but unfortunately after 13 laps the tyres were destroyed. I had Chilton right behind me and with the tyres in the state they were I couldn’t hold him off so I finished 15th. After the way the race started, just to be there at the end was pretty good, but it’s obviously not how we wanted it to go after such a good Saturday. However, it’s another race done, more lessons learned and, overall, a pretty good weekend.”

GAR – “I totally should not have dropped acid right before this race. But this mad hottie in a bikini ran up to me and snuggled up closely and I could feel her youth and beauty radiating through my track suit and I put my arm around her. She whispered something in my ear, something I didn’t quite catch because fucking Buxton went by, then, in his ridiculous sport coat and those giant headphones and his brow was all furrowed like he was thinking really hard about something important and deep. . . Yeah, I know: about F1, right? Hah! Anyway, it was really distracting and I opened my mouth to ask this hottie what she had said and, right then, she stuck her finger in my mouth and I felt something dissolve on my tongue. I got in my car and right as all the lights went red, I realized that I wasn’t in Monaco, I was in Yankee stadium and it was the ninth inning and I was pitching to Babe Ruth, but it wasn’t Babe Ruth, it was a purple dragon and dragon whispered in my ear and it was then that I realized that I had heard what the Bikini Hottie had said: ‘Tyres,’ she said. ‘Blame the tyres.’ Next thing I know, there’s a checkered flag and I see ROS all happy and VET crying what looked like oil and HAM shaking his head and I’m finishing the race and it’s like magic.”

Charles Pic (DNF)
“It’s obviously disappointing for my race to end that early, especially as I’d made a really good start and was running in 15th ahead of Gutierrez and just behind Di Resta on the same pace as him when I had to stop. It looks like the cause of the retirement was a gearbox problem and the fire was from the exhausts which had overheated. It looked a lot more dramatic than it felt in the car – I could feel there was a problem and started pulling over and as soon as the car stopped there was a lot of smoke, but it was all out quickly and the marshals did a good job to clear it away without bringing out the safety car. As I say, it’s a shame as we’d had a good weekend until that point. The car felt great in the race and as our deg levels were good on the long runs we were looking at stopping only once which could have put us right in the middle of the action. However, we’re in Canada next, at another circuit where I think we’ll be able to show how the car’s pace keeps improving, and with a bit more luck we’ll be in a position to have a better weekend.”

PIC – “The clag in Monaco is not all that tasty. It is money-flavored, though, and money makes everything taste better. Plus, mostly, I eat the clag out of the belly buttons of bikini hotties and that makes clag taste better, too. I’m really looking forward to Canada though, because the clag there is served with bacon and all the beer you can drink!”

Pirelli
Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director
“Once again, we saw a Monaco Grand Prix where safety cars and a red flag played a prominent role. This had a defining effect on strategy, effectively meaning that all the careful pre-race planning went out of the window. Nonetheless, we experienced the expected low levels of tyre wear and degradation: in fact the race leader went one lap longer this year during his first stint on the supersoft compared to last year, even though the compounds are generally softer. After the race was stopped, most drivers chose to re-start on used supersofts, having to make them last for 32 laps for the finish – although they were certainly helped by a second safety car period. Congratulations to Nico Rosberg and Mercedes, who dominated every session and led an action-packed grand prix from start to finish. We also saw some great performances lower down the field from drivers who used their tyres and strategy to very good effect, despite the extremely unpredictable race circumstances.”

Hembery – “I’m through taking all y’all’s shit! Renew our fucking contract for next year, don’t renew our fucking contract for next year. I COULD GIVE A SHIT. Secret fucking testing for everyone! Except those assholes at RBR. “For safety”, my fucking ass! Hembrey OUT!”

2013 Spanish GP, Post-Race Quotes, Translated

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Fygar

What do mean there’s no podium spot for fourth? You get your fucking ass some fucking wood and a fucking hammer and you add a podium spot for fourth place. The VET-BOT only finishes on the podium!!!! I’ll just have Massa share his magnum with me.

Ferrari
Fernando Alonso (1st)
“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.”

ALO – VET, this is what’s like to have a soul. People fucking freak out when you win. Winning should not be like a sunrise, winning should be like a fucking supernova. Also, my girlfriend. So, fuck all y’all: ALO esta regresado! Confidential to Pirelli: For the love of Dios, don’t change the tires! If we have to do five stops, it does not matter. All that matters are the oily robot-tears of VET, moistening the track and fogging his visor.

Felipe Massa (3rd)
“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.”

MAS – Holy Mother of God! Is this what CHI feels like when he finishes a race?! No wonder he’s all caps, all the time! THIS FEELS AWESOME! I don’t have a new girlfriend, I just have a new mantra: “Alonso’s coat-tails, Alonso’s coat-tails, Alonso’s coat-tails” So far, it is totally working!

Lotus
Kimi Raikkonen (2nd)
“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.”

RAI – At some point, you get fucking tired of being the fucking Barry Sanders of F1.

Romain Grosjean (DNF)
“I made a poor start but after that I was on the pace and we know we’re able to produce good race strategies, so there was potential for a strong result today. The car was feeling pretty good until we had an issue with the rear suspension which meant I had to return to the pits and retire from the race, which is a great shame. It’s always disappointing for everyone when something like this happens but there’s no-one to blame; it’s just a part of motor racing.”

GRO – Man! And I was totally loving that new chassis! No, I mean like, really loving that chassis. Like, no, we were going to get married; it understood me. What? You don’t understand? You wouldn’t, man. You wouldn’t.

Red Bull
Sebastian Vettel (4th)
“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.”

VET – I hope nobody noticed how I just about gave up and pouted my way to fourth. Perhaps if I spend the next two weeks, stomping my feet and diving onto my bed angrily, shouting that I hate Marko, I hate him! they’ll let me try out a four-stop strategy, like, as a strategy and not a mid-race conniption fit. I know I’m mixing my pop-culture references, here, but, seriously: you, you, you won’t like me when I’m angry. Just say that while breathing like Darth Vader and you’ll kinda get the gist of my emotional state right now.

Mark Webber (5th)
“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.”

WEB – Maybe we could just have a thing where I don’t start with the other racers and I just start from 15th or 20th and then work my way up and it won’t be so embarrassing when I’m on the grid, grinding into first gear as the likes of CHI and RIC drive around me. I’ve got to stop taking racing hints from my grandfather! Best part of the race? Finishing fifth, right behind VET! The sound of his sad-no-podium-for-me tears, splashing on my visor, was like the laughter of a thousand school-children, racing out the doors to the first day of summer vacation. . .. Or, considering that it’s VET we’re talking about: it’s more like the sound of guys laughing at dirty jokes as they club baby seals. Either way, it was a nice sound.

Mercedes
Nico Rosberg (6th)
“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.”

ROS – Fuckity fuck fuck. Fucking bullshit. Fuck, fuck and fuck. . .. . . .. FUCK!

Lewis Hamilton (12th)
“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.”

HAM – Where’s T-Dawg, my producer? I’ve got some great lyrics for a really sad song about a guy who’s trying to remain positive but knows it’s all this, like, farce and the guy just flys off to L.A. with his dog and his girlfriend while these sad-sacks try to work magic on this mud-flap of a car but, in the end, it’s ok, ’cause I got mad beats, my dog, my God, and my girl. Bless.

Force India
Paul di Resta (7th)
“We said before the race that seventh would be a good result and towards the end I was even fighting for sixth. So we can take a lot of positives from the weekend because this is a track that has traditionally not suited our car. It was a great effort by the team to get through to Q3 yesterday and come away with a seventh place today. The result shows the consistency that we have had since the start of the year and that we can perform each weekend. There’s more to come too, because there is more we can do to optimise the car with the new parts we introduced here, but this is definitely a big result for us.”

RES – Can’t wait to be the PER hot-commodity for 2014! Oh. . .. . wait.

Adrian Sutil (13th)
“It’s extremely disappointing to come away empty handed from this race because we were so quick today. My start was very good and I went around the outside of the first corner, which worked well because I was up in eighth by the end of the first lap. It was all going to plan until the first pit stop when there was an issue and I lost so much time. The team told me to switch the engine off while they sorted the problem, but it cost me the chance of points. For the rest of the race it was a case of pushing as much as possible because you never know what can happen. It’s frustrating, but you have to accept these things. Hopefully it will not happen again.”

SUT – Racing is hard!

McLaren
Jenson Button (8th)
“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.”

BUT – Did we lower expectations enough so that this result seemed acceptable? No? It still seemed sad? Fuck.

Sergio Perez (9th)
“That wasn’t the race I’d hoped for. It’s so difficult to manage these tyres. We didn’t do a perfect job, and, like many drivers, I required four pitstops. So I didn’t maximise the full potential of our car today, so I wasn’t happy in that respect, but, having said that, I think it’s been a stronger weekend overall for us. Our car is still improving, and I think we can do a slightly better job at Monaco. After that I hope we’ll be able to gradually close the gap to the cars in front of us over the next few races.”

PER – When I say “cars in front of us”, I mean, “the cars in front of me”. When I say, “cars in front of me”, I mean, “GET FUCKING BUTTON THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!!!!”.

Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal
“Jenson drove a typically classy race to work his way back from a very unlucky start, which saw him drop almost to the back of the field, all the way through to eighth place at the finish. To do that, on this circuit, where overtaking is notoriously difficult, and in this car, which we know is not yet as competitive as we need it to be, was a seriously impressive feat. And to do it on a three-stop strategy, managing the tyres with impeccable care yet still keeping the pace consistently strong while so doing, was more remarkable still. By contrast, like most drivers here today, Checo opted for a four-stop strategy – but, like Jenson, he also drove a very good race, finishing in ninth place not far behind his far more experienced team-mate. At the end of the race Checo’s tyres required diligent nursing, but like Jenson he managed the situation very capably. We scored six world championship points today, and of course we aren’t satisfied with that. Nonetheless, to score points with both cars in what was a decidedly technical race is a very creditable achievement, and constitutes a solid platform from which to move forwards from here on in. Next we go to Monaco, a grand prix that McLaren has won a record 15 times in the past – and, although we aren’t predicting a 16th McLaren victory on those famously tortuous streets this year, we’ll be doing our utmost there to score as many world championship points there as we possibly can.”

Whitmarsh – We have sucked a lot less in the past. I hope everyone remembers that! Especially when it comes to making staffing decisions for 2014!

Toro Rosso
Daniel Ricciardo (10th)
“I had a really poor start off the line, with a lot of wheelspin and, to be honest, the first few laps of the race I really struggled with front grip and locking the front brakes. I tried to be patient and eventually it improved and I could see the cars ahead of me were not pulling away so much. It was disappointing to lose ground like that, but the pace itself was not too bad. At the first stop, we made quite a few changes in terms of wing settings and tyre pressures and that helped, so the next two stints were quite good and I made a few passing moves, so it was certainly not a boring race. But then, towards the end of the race, our pace began to fade again. It wasn’t easy to get tenth, even if we looked on course to get more than the one point earlier in the race, so it’s better than nothing.”

RIC – Of course, I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. All I should be talking about is the boner I have for coming in ahead of HAM.

Jean-Eric Vergne (DNF)
“After a good start, I then had a lot of understeer and we had to keep adding a lot of wing at each pit stop, which didn’t really help. The strategy we adopted was the right one and even with a damaged floor and wing I was able to do good lap times. Yet again I was unlucky and I hope that stops soon, because as I was coming into the pits, Sauber did an unsafe release with Hulkenberg who drove into me and then I had a problem with a tyre, so it was one problem after another today. I plan to have a better weekend in Monaco in two weeks’ time. I haven’t lost hope for the future, given the performance we had shown earlier in the weekend and it’s just such a shame as that good pace should have allowed us to score points today.”

VER – You know the sound that puking makes? Yeah, that’s how I feel about my race. Anybody needs me, I’ll be watching the White, Blue and Red Trilogy, trying to squeeze some meaning from this seemingly meaningless existence.

Sauber
Esteban Gutierrez (11th)
“I focused on getting the most out of the car today, and it was important to achieve a result like this for me and the team. The team has given me the patience and tools to improve as a driver and this is what I could extract from the car. It was a tough race and tyre management was critical. At the beginning of the race I was quite surprised about how much I could get out of the tyres. The last two stints were a bit more difficult, but this is a step forward.”

GUT – Y’all ever watched “Y Tu Mama Tambien”? I’m the less bitchy, non-rich Mexican No. 2 of F1. Glad to be here!

Nico Hulkenberg (15th)
“We knew that it would be a difficult race today. The start went well and, until the incident in the pit lane, we looked quite good. We planned for a three stop, but then had to convert to a four stop. But then we had the incident, which ruined the race for us. Obviously the timing wasn’t quite right, but we are a team, so we have to look into it and make sure it does not happen again. Overall the car still felt quite difficult to drive, and I think we still have some homework ahead of us.”

HUL – The late stages of “Hulkenberg-Fever!” sadly, seem to include a lot of shivering and aches and pains and losing. I just have to learn to say no when WEB offers me his Viagra, saying that shit cures everything!

Williams
Pastor Maldonado (14th)
“The pace was unfortunately not in the car today. We made one more pit stop than we hoped to because I was given a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pitlane but overall we did the best we could. We now need to regroup, work hard and prepare for Monaco.”

MAL – There are a lot of fucking buttons and numbers on this steering wheel. Isn’t it enough that I go around on this closed track without getting lost?! Now I gotta worry about how fast I go in pit lane??!

Valtteri Bottas (16th)
“I couldn’t feel the grip in the car and we were sliding a lot from the start which meant we were hard on the tyres. We made a three-stop strategy work but in the end, Pastor switched to a four-stop race and that seemed to be better. We’re not where we want to be, so there is still a lot of work to do.”

BOT – It could’ve been VET’s robo-tears making the track slick or it could be that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. . . Either way, glad to be here!

Caterham
Charles Pic (17th)
“I’m really happy with today’s performance. Finishing 17th doesn’t really tell the whole story as we ended the race right behind one of the Williams cars which shows that we’ve made some good progress this weekend. The blue flags didn’t help as without them I’d have had a much better chance of overtaking him, but it was still good that I could attack him in the last few laps. The car felt great for the whole race, particularly after my third stop when we went for a 25 lap final stint on the hard tyres and I was able to manage the degradation levels well which meant I could push right to the flag. It’s good to have a Sunday like this as I hadn’t really been able to get the most out of the new package on Friday or Saturday, but it felt good right from the first lap today. There’s still more to come from the parts we brought here, quite a bit more in fact, so we’ll work on that back at the factory and see how much more we can extract for the next race in Monaco. That’s obviously going to be busy for me and the whole team, but after seeing the pace we had today, more to come from the race five update and the fact the team has been strong there in the past, I think it could be a really interesting weekend for us.”

PIC – I gotta say: I love the shit out these clag tapas! It’s like all these little dishes of crazy, fun clag combinations and you just keep eating and eating and drinking and drinking and pretty soon it’s 3am and you lost an F1 race again!

Giedo van der Garde (DNF)
“It’s obviously such a shame that my race ended like it did today, but sometimes these things happen. I’d had a great start and was fighting with Button and both Williams cars through the first couple of stints The car felt great, really good and I was definitely having the best of the season so far. When I came in for my second stop I could feel that there was a problem with the left rear as soon as I rejoined the track. At some point the wheel came off so I tried to make it back to the garage to see if I could continue, but once the team had taken a close look it was clear I had to retire the car. As I say, it’s a shame but it’s another lesson for me and the team. Sometimes you don’t have the luck, but we have a lot of positives to take from this weekend. The updates on the car are working well, and we have more to come. Our race pace is really good, strong enough to fight with a few cars ahead and my quali performance was easily my best this year. Next up we go to Monaco, a track I know well and one where I was on the podium twice last year in GP2, and in Formula Renault 3.5, so another qualifying performance like I had in Spain, and a race like I had until retiring today, and I think we can do well.”

GAR – Anybody needs me, I’m going to be in my wooden shoes, in a bath tub filled with tulip petals, watching DVDs of windmills, thinking of all the exciting ice-skating I used to do with my brother, Hans. Nobody disturb me until I can be immediately carted from the Monaco airport to a yacht-full of bikini-clad hotties.

Marussia
Jules Bianchi (18th)
“I feel like I drove a really hard race today but there is not so much to show for it. I am obviously pleased to have had three strong middle stints but the damage was done in the opening few laps when I had to pit for a new nose. I think we recovered well from this and had we not had the extra stop we could have been fighting with Bottas today. Our lap time was much faster than theirs and I managed to get the gap down to eight seconds in the final stint, but pushing so hard stretched the tyres too much and I had to back off to just focus on getting the car home. Another two-car finish is important to us. It was a race that demanded all my concentration and I certainly put all of the tyre management experience I have gained in the first four races to good use today, so it was quite an exhausting day but one which also had some positive highlights. I will focus on these and hope for better things in my home race in Monaco in two weeks’ time.”

BIA – I just had three weeks off and this racing shit is exhausting, yo!

Max Chilton (19th)
“It was disappointing to have such a problematic start to the race and then we had the pit stop issue, which was a further setback. What is encouraging is my lap time in free air today, which I’m pretty pleased with, and it’s good to be able to demonstrate more of my outright pace than I’ve been able to over the past few races. If we can get on top of some of these problems we can really start to come into our own a bit more. The pace is there so we should be able to get back to closing the gap to the midfield. Next it’s one of my favourite races and I’ll be doing everything I can to prepare for my first time out in a Formula 1 car there. Hopefully we can enjoy a better reward for our efforts.”

CHI – GUYS! HOLY SHIT! ONCE AGAIN, I FINISHED. . . .ALIVE, YO! NEXT WEEK: MONACO, GUYS! SO MANY HOT WOMEN! AND A RACE! SO GLAD TO BE HERE!!

Pirelli, Translated

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Fygar

Say, there, Giuseppe, do you have more of that Essence of Soiled Diaper? I just ran this tyre though the How-Many-F1-Drivers-Will-Bitch-About-The-Tyres-?-Ometer. It went past “Makes Massa Cry”, but didn’t quite hit “Makes Hamilton Buy a Case of Haribo and Cry-Eat the Whole Thing.”

Danke to F1Zone for the link.

Pirelli has resisted pressure to radically alter their tyre compounds, although a tweaked hard tyre will be introduced at next month’s Spanish Grand Prix.

Pirelli had been under pressure, particularly champions Red Bull, to move away from the early season races defined by aggressive compounds.

“After evaluating tyre performance over the balance of the first four races, we took the decision – in consultation with all of the teams – to change the hard compound from Spain onwards, as we did in Barcelona two years ago when we also introduced a new hard tyre for the rest of the season,” said Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembrey.”

“This latest version of the hard compound is much closer to the 2012 tyre, with the aim of giving the teams more opportunity to run a wider range of strategies in combination with the other compounds, which remain unchanged.”

The company has also nominated which tyres will be used at the next three races.

Pirelli’s hardest compounds – the medium and hard – will be used in Spain to cope with the high energy demands of the Circuit de Catalunya.

The two softest compounds – the supersoft and soft – will be used around the tight and twisty corners of Monaco, as has been the case since 2011.

For the Canadian Grand Prix, Pirelli will bring the supersoft and medium tyres.

Pirelli – “Fine, RBR, FINE! We won’t change the whole caboodle just because you guys walk onto the paddock, see the ‘Pirelli’ logo and drop to the floor screaming like a five year-old who discovers that the iPad didn’t get charged last night; we’ll tweak one fucking tyre. And by ‘tweak’, we mean ‘we won’t do shit, but we’ll tell you we did shit’ and YOU’LL STILL WIN EVERY FUCKING RACE! Or, heh, at least, one of your drivers will win. One of them wins on these crappy, crappy tyres; the other, you have a little problem with gassing his car up. Seriously, how can you complain about the tyres when you can barely keep one on the track and, of the drivers, you keep exactly zero of them happy?

Gah! Stop projecting!!!!!!”

2013 Bahrain GP, Post-Race Driver’s Quotes, Translated

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Fygar

Would you all like to eat a giant taco of FUUUCK YOUU??! No? Oh, well YOU WILL EAT IT ANYWAY!!! Hey, it’s no Al Pastor, but no one ever said life was perfect! I have this nice green salsa.. . it’s kind of spicy. . .what? You don’t like spicy? Shut up and eat your Fuck You taco.

Thanks, Bernie, for the link. You are has generous with links as you are accommodating to oppressive regimes with loads of oil money.

Red Bull
Sebastian Vettel (1st)
“It was good fun at the beginning with some very tight wheel to wheel racing. At the start you don’t know if you will be quick or not, as everyone is a bit all over the place, including yourself! It’s important to get to the front; we saw at the last race that if you get stuck behind someone then it does have an impact on tyre wear and today it was important to make use of the tyres we had saved from qualifying yesterday. I love to be in clean air, so I was pushing hard to get into the lead and, with the speed we had mid-race, it was quite comfortable today. Well done to the whole team, to everyone here, to the factory in the background and especially to those who were working on the strategy today; it worked just as we expected, so we obviously got the numbers right.”

VET – “All y’all who think I’m a dick can, in fact, suck my dick. Numbers, speed, laps: these are things that have meaning to me. Emotions, feelings, camaraderie, others (other than those who help me attain numbers, laps, and speed): these things are superfluous. I have enjoyed my human counterparts’ attempts to challenge my domination! I look forward to seeing them in this planet’s country called ‘Spain’.”

Mark Webber (7th)
“The beginning wasn’t too bad, but we lost quite a bit of time in the second stint trying to clear people. We went aggressive on the first few out laps, which meant we jumped people, but the tyres didn’t like it. That meant the second stint was a disaster really in terms of pace at the end and that loaded the other two stints up. In the middle of the race I thought I could get on the podium, but then it was about pace management and it’s a fine line between racing and saving tyres. Others pitted a bit before me at the end, but it wasn’t enough for me to get home. If you race people hard then you run out of tyres, but if you don’t then they come through. In the end it was a pretty good battle with Lewis for both of us; neither of us had any tyres left, but we were trying to race as best we could.”

WEB – “Heh. Well, let’s see. . . .crappiest events so far this year? Getting shat on by my team-mate? Hmm. .. No, that wasn’t it. Grid penalty after a giant poop of a race in China? Well. . .. no, that wasn’t so bad, really. Getting FUCKING PASSED by FUCKING PEREZ and his FUCKING FLECHA DE ROJO BUS IN THE LAST FIVE LAPS??!!!! This guy, from Porsche, he left me a phone number on his card. I’ve got that around here somewhere. What the fuck did I do with that card?!”

Christian Horner, Red Bull team principal
“An absolutely impeccable drive from Sebastian today. He executed two brilliant overtakes, one on Fernando and the other on Nico Rosberg. After that he dominated the race until the finish and managed his tyres brilliantly. The strategy worked perfectly with the tyres that we conserved in qualifying, which ended with a dominant win on a three-stop strategy. For Mark, after racing very well in the first stint and making progress through the first round of pit stops, in the second stint he pushed very hard on the first few laps which effectively elevated him into second position. Unfortunately he couldn’t achieve the longevity in that stint, which put him under pressure for the final two. His last stop put him in the range of those on two-stops, and then it was a matter of making it to the end. Despite fighting fantastically well and racing very hard with Lewis, he ran out of rear tyres before the end of the race, but still got some valuable points.”

Horner – “VET is so pretty when wins. Mark, you’re cute but so very slow. Love, Christian.”

Lotus
Kimi Raikkonen (2nd)
“You’re never really happy if you don’t win, but I suppose second place is as close as you can get. I drove to the maximum and the car had the pace that we missed in qualifying yesterday so it was a pretty good result. We didn’t have the speed to challenge Sebastian [Vettel] today but we did have the pace to get both cars on the podium so I’m happy for the team.”

RAI – Bitches. You feel my cold breath, don’t you? It’s pointless to pretend like I’m not here. One wrong fucking move, VET. One. Wrong. Move. And I will wrap the automaton called, “Vettel” in a crystalline cloak of defeat and misery. People call me “emotionless”, I have a fucking fire burning within me. I am the ember that crackles and shimmers through the night. Waiting, waiting, waiting to ignite the conflagration. Also, for fuck’s sake, just how long is the German National Anthem??!! We get it: you’re the Nation of Destiny. I love the Finnish Anthem: ‘Laa Laa LAaaaa! Finland! We’re a country. It’s cold here. Life is hard. We try to have fun. There are ice dragons. Finland!'”.

Romain Grosjean (3rd)
“It’s great to be back on the podium and it’s a fantastic result for the team. It hasn’t been an easy start to the season for me, but we made good progress through the weekend and are now back to where we should be. I felt much more comfortable in the car and the result today is a deserved reward for everyone after all our hard work. It was a really enjoyable race with a lot of overtaking and a couple of tense moments along the way, so to come from P11 through to the podium is really satisfying. We’ve had consistency already, finishing every race in the points, but now it’s the big results we’re chasing and this is a very good start to that challenge.”

GRO – “I’ve already asked HAM to write a song for me. The lyrics go: ‘I was right! I was right! I needed a new car! A new chassis! All you assholes love Kimi more! Why? I’m lovable, too! I’m French! I got my new toy! It goes really fast! It totally wasn’t psychological! No! No! No! It wasn’t all in my head! Have I mentioned I was right?’ Dope beats, y’all!”

Ferrari
Fernando Alonso (8th)
“We definitely didn’t have much luck today and that’s a real shame, at the end of what had been such a positive weekend for me and Felipe up until this afternoon. We had been competitive in free practice and qualifying and we were both expecting to have a good race. After the opening laps, when I thought the rear tyres had gone off, the pit wall informed that the DRS was stuck. It wasn’t fixed properly at the first stop and so I had to come in for another one. From then on, the clear instruction from the pit wall not to use it affected my race. I tried to recover but it was really difficult finding places to overtake without DRS. When you are far back, in the middle of a group, tyre degradation is even harder to manage. I am sure that without the problems me and Felipe had, we would have finished higher up, because the car responds very well and it is definitely our best of the last four years. But having a good race involves a lot of factors, including a bit of luck. Let’s hope it balances out very soon, maybe even starting in Barcelona, my home race. There, it will be even more important to have a good qualifying, because it’s not easy to overtake on that track and so starting from the front is vital.”

ALO – “If shit doesn’t turn around for me by Barcelona, I am FUCKED. Turns out, having a 18+ hottie on the paddock is not the good luck charm I thought it was. Bummer for MAS, ’cause I had just given him a list to all these awesome web sites. Also, I have to TOTALLY stop hanging out with WEB.”

Felipe Massa (15th)
“I was really unlucky in this race and even if it’s true that many things can happen in this sport, I can’t find an explanation for why so many of them have to be negative. At the start, I lost ground after the collision with Sutil and then I lost even more time coming back to the pits to change tyres and that wiped out any chance of having a good race. At the start, I suffered a bit with understeer, but I don’t believe that was the cause of my problems, while we still need to check what happened to my tyres that failed in this way. In the first instance it was probably delamination on the right rear and in the second it might have been due to a puncture. Now we must try and understand exactly what happened and immediately turn our attention to the next race.”

MAS – “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ok, Whoever has the ‘Hulkenberg’ voo-doo doll and whoever painted it to look like me, you can stop now! Ha! Ha! Ha! Very FUCKING FUNNY! Really, ok. Stop, ok?”

Force India
Paul di Resta (4th)
“It’s great to round off the fly-away races with a fourth place and a race that was probably my strongest Grand Prix. The podium was very close, but with our strategy we were always going to be vulnerable at the end of the race – especially to Grosjean who had two new sets of medium tyres. I had a good start to the race, a strong opening stint and we showed our true speed today, but ultimately fourth place was the maximum that was possible. We will get on the podium one day, hopefully soon, but for now we can be very happy with the points we’ve scored today. A big thanks to the whole team because it’s been an excellent weekend and I feel we managed to get 100 percent out of the car.”

RES – “I caught ‘Hulkenberg Fever'”!

Adrian Sutil (13th)
“It’s disappointing to get a puncture in a race that looked so promising. My start was clean and I was racing Massa going into turn four. I was on the outside; I gave him a lot of space but he was off-line and made contact with my front right tyre. I don’t know what he did exactly but I had a puncture immediately. I had to pit and lost a lot of time, which ended my chance of scoring points. I had amazing pace in the race and I just kept my head down to try and recover something from the race, but I had lost too much with the puncture. But I’m happy for the team and fourth place for Paul gives us more points. There are many more races to come so we will keep focused and next time score points with both cars.”

SUT – “Oh, man. I am beginning to accept that I suck and that I race for Force India.”

Mercedes
Lewis Hamilton (5th)
“I’m really happy with our result today. It’s been a tough weekend for us but we got through it and finishing in fifth place was some good damage limitation. My race didn’t start well at all. I was looking after the tyres but I really struggled on the first two stints and was falling back. But as the temperatures dropped, the car picked up and then I had the grip that I needed to push and close the gap. I had so much fun fighting with Mark at the end. We really needed that point and I was so determined to get by. It was good, clean wheel-to-wheel racing. I’m very proud of what we have achieved over the first four races and to be third in the drivers’ championship is beyond any of our expectations. But we’ve got to keep pushing and find more performance. We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth at the moment and, if we can make that next step, then we can close the gap.”

HAM – “While I am glad that I jumped like a proverbial rat from the sinking ship that is McLaren, I obviously jumped from one dinghy to, like, this 40 year-old Alcoa paddleboat. I was kinda aiming for that yacht over there. Yeah, the one with all the girls in bikinis and the big red, um, bull, um, painted on the side. . . .. . I’ll be over here, crying. Bless”

Nico Rosberg (9th)
“A tough day for me. As nice as it was to start from pole this afternoon, it was just as hard to finish in ninth place. I didn’t feel comfortable in the car today and it wasn’t much fun out there really. We switched to a four-stop strategy at the end of my third stint but it wasn’t enough. We were using the rear tyres too much and at the end, I was really struggling and wasn’t able to push hard enough. There is a lot of work ahead and we need to focus on why our race performance isn’t matching the pace that we can show in qualifying. Hopefully we can make some steps here before the European season starts.”

ROS – “Well, that was fun while it lasted! Then it sucked.”

McLaren
Sergio Perez (6th)
“That was an incredible race – really enjoyable. I have to thank the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team first of all – we’ve been through some difficult times recently, but they kept on supporting me. All in all, it’s been a solid weekend – we got pretty much the maximum from the car, ran a great strategy, looked after the tyres, and scored some very useful points. I guess I was a little aggressive on track today; banging wheels with Jenson was perhaps a little too risky, a little too hard, but the team never came on the radio to tell us to stop racing. There were no team orders. There was a lot of adrenaline from both of us, and Jenson is always a very strong racer, but hopefully we’ll help each other a little more in the future. He was calm and friendly after the race, though, which was great; but that isn’t surprising because he’s a great guy as well as a great driver.”

PER – “What? All you fucking ‘gueros’ have never heard of the term ‘Machismo’? Are fucking idiots? You sit around all week, saying, ‘Sergio has no dick! Sergio has no dick!’ And you think I’m not going to whip this monster out and fucking waggle it every face that has eyes within twenty miles?! Fuck you and fuck you and , you? Yes: fuck you. Confidential to Button: You are cute. You have bad teeth, you must. You are slower than The Monster. Stay the fuck out of my way.”

Jenson Button (10th)
“Today wasn’t brilliant for me. Okay, the race was a lot of fun, but I didn’t get the result I wanted because I used up my tyres fending off Checo. There was a lot of action out there, and as I say I wasn’t really able to conserve my tyres as a result. That was partly because I had to work my way back through after my second pitstop, when I’d been fighting with Romain (Grosjean). But there was a lot of clean racing out there too – although as I say Checo was a bit tough, which was a little unusual. He did a good job overall though: he had good pace, and he looked after his tyres well. So, congratulations to him, because together we scored some very useful points for the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team today.”

BUT – “Have you fuckers seen PER’s cock?! HOLY SHIT!”

Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren team principal
“The 2013 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix was a fantastic motor race, and I’m sure it was hugely entertaining for the tens of millions of viewers who watched it at home as well as for those lucky enough to be here at Sakhir to see it for real. Checo drove his best race for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes so far, passing both Fernando and Mark in the closing stages, to finish a fighting sixth at the flag. It was a very good drive, especially when you consider that he was able to maintain such strong race pace despite having sustained damage to his rear wing and one of his front-wing endplates. Jenson would have finished right up there, too, had he not had to make an extra tyre stop with just 10 laps to go. Nonetheless, he, too, finished in a solid points-scoring position. The two of them spent much of the afternoon in close proximity to each other – sometimes in nail-bitingly close proximity actually – but that’s motor racing. Both Jenson and Checo are fast, forceful and hungry for success – and that’s exactly how it should be. It’s called racing, and we at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes always allow our drivers to race. It’s what this sport is all about. Having said that, it’s probably fair to say that Checo was a little too combative with Jenson this afternoon, and I think he knows that. From here we travel back to Woking, where we’ll work hard on our upgrade package for Spain, where in three weeks’ time we hope to continue the process of demonstrating the fruits of our steady development of MP4-28 into the competitive machine we need it to be.”

Whitmarsh – “I knew we’d get some results if we kept showing Checo pictures of him in a Speedo with a big arrow and a question mark pointed at his genitals. I only hope that Button will keep having Jessica come ’round the paddock now that she knows the frightening, thrilling truth about Sergio.”

Williams
Pastor Maldonado (11th)
“Considering the problems we have been having, I think we got 100 percent out of the car today. We put everything together today, working well as a team and managing the tyres, and 11th was the maximum we could have achieved. We are really looking forward to the next race where we should see a step forward. We must stay together and positive. It’s a difficult time, but we still have many races to go.”

MAL – “Was I even in Bahrain? I have a bunch of sand in my ass-crack. It must’ve been more than a bad dream.”

Valtteri Bottas (14th)
“The race was really dominated by the rear tyres today. In the first two stints I was fighting with a lot of cars so it was difficult to look after the tyres and manage the pace. The last two stints were better as I had more clean air and managed to make up some ground on the cars ahead. We now need to keep on working to get some updates to help us in coming races.”

BOT – “By ‘updates’, I mean, ‘hacking into the VettelFeed from Planet Speed Robot and actually making podium.'”

Sauber
Nico Hulkenberg (12th)
“It was a difficult and frustrating weekend. It was clear from the beginning that we were not fast enough and that it would be challenging. We are lacking speed and eat up the rear tyres too much so it simply wasn’t enough this weekend. We pitted a bit too late, because we expected to have more problems on low fuel, which in the end we didn’t have. That cost us at least one position. This weekend clearly showed we need to bring some new parts to Barcelona in order to improve our speed and fight for points.”

HUL – “I cannot wait to get to a country where we can drink.”

Esteban Gutierrez (18th)
“I expected a difficult race and this is what I got. We need to find more speed. On the first lap I had contact down into Turn 10, which was really hard to avoid. Apart from that, things were quite okay, but, of course, finishing a race like this is definitely not enough and we need to improve. We have to analyse the strategy and hopefully we will bring some good updates to Barcelona.”

GUT – “Glad I finished!”

Toro Rosso
Daniel Ricciardo (16th)
“I got a reasonable start, better than some of the guys around me and I got ahead of Grosjean. Then at some point, I locked up the wheels and lost a position or two. All afternoon, we just struggled with speed: in the first stint, tyre warm-up was a problem and I was losing a lot of time on braking. We never really recovered, even though we tried to make a few changes to the balance of the car at the pit stops. We must look into what exactly was wrong with the car as we were really limited in terms of downforce.”

RIC – “Ugh.”

Jean-Eric Vergne (DNF)
“I was pushed by Bottas as I passed him on the outside of Turn Four, giving him plenty of room and he clipped my car. Unfortunately for Van de Garde, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and it was a big impact, which caused a lot of damage to the car, including a puncture and left it with a big piece of the floor missing. After I pitted, I tried to carry on to see how the car felt, but in the end, I was a lap down, I’d lost plenty of aero and the team could see that the damage was causing the car to overheat to an unsafe level, so they called me in to retire. This opening sequence of races has not gone too well for me and I really hope that the beginning of the European part of the season will be like a new start for me.”

VER – “What RIC said.”

Caterham
Charles Pic (17th)
“That’s our best race of the year so far and one the whole team should be pleased with. I quickly passed both the Marussia cars after starting on the medium tyres which held up for the first stint pretty well, allowing me to pit for the first time on lap 11. By that point the car felt good, well balanced and I was pulling away from the cars behind without any issues. We stayed on the hard tyres for the second stint and again the deg levels were good. I passed Gutierrez and was running comfortably in 16th until Sutil got past about two thirds of the way through the race. As the fuel levels dropped the deg levels increased a little but it wasn’t an issue. I was keeping pace with Ricciardo just ahead, and keeping Gutierrez behind me and we decided to stay out after the third stop so I did a very long stint on the hard tyres, 21 laps, and brought it home in 17th. I’m really pleased with how close we finished to the Toro Rosso ahead, and the fact we kept a Sauber behind – maybe if I’d been slightly further up the road after the start we could have beaten Ricciardo, but we can take this performance as a good step and look forward to what’s coming next in Spain.”

PIC – “You know, you travel all over the world and you eat a lot of clag and there’s just some clag that doesn’t suit your palette. Some people like sandy, gritty clag infused with the blood of the oppressed. For me, it just doesn’t do it. Give me some clag with chips or clag with a nice red wine reduction. These guys here, with there hummus and no drinks with dinner. .. You just have to smile and compliment the clag-chef and choke it down.”

Giedo van der Garde (21st)
“I didn’t have a great start but I was up to about 16th with a couple of other cars going into turn four and saw that Vergne had spun and was moving off the line. I tried to miss him but couldn’t and we made contact which destroyed my front wing and basically ended my race on the first lap. I couldn’t really do anything from that point so I just got my head down and pushed but after losing so much time with the unplanned stop on lap one, and having a delaminated right front after my fourth stop, there really wasn’t anyone to race with. From that point I just made sure I brought the car home and used this as another step in my learning curve. Despite today it’s been a good weekend for the team. The developments we put on my teammate’s car have worked well and there’s another step to come in Spain when I’ll have the same package as Charles. From that point I think my season will look different. We’ll be on tracks I know really well, from GP2, World Series and from F1, and with the updates we have coming we have reasons to be positive. The first four races have been exactly what I thought they would – pretty tough, but I’m learning all the time and the whole team’s right behind me. I’m feeling really good physically and mentally and I can’t wait to get started again in Barcelona.”

GAR – “Asia sucks. Getting hit, too, sucks. If any of you fuckers need me for the next three weeks, I’ll be in Amsterdam, eating fucking Gouda, riding my bike and sniffing the fucking tulips!”

Marussia
Jules Bianchi (19th)
“A really difficult race for us today and a tough weekend all round to be honest. I was hoping that things might improve for the race, but we really struggled with the tyres. On my fourth stint the plan was to go to the end but we had to pit again. From there it was just about making it to the finish and holding position with the cars around me. There isn’t much more to say about here; it was not destined to be our race and we are at the stage where we need to implement the next round of upgrades, which of course are coming right when we need them for Barcelona. My thanks to the pit crew today for a busy day of pit stops and for keeping their spirits through the weekend.”

BIA – “I’m becoming less enchanted with being here.”

Max Chilton (20th)
“Despite a difficult weekend for us here, there were some encouraging signs in the race today. I got a really good start, which I was very pleased with, and this meant that we were able to leapfrog both of the Caterhams for a while. Unfortunately we struggled on the tyres and it wasn’t long into each stint before we hit that window again. I’m pleased that I have demonstrated that I drove to the pace of the car today and although we weren’t in a position to race who we want to be, I did at least have a good battle with my team mate.”

CHI – “HOLY CRAP!! HAVE YOU GUYS EVER SEEN MORE SAND??!! IT’S EVERYWHERE! WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?! MAN, THEY SURE SO HAVE US RACE IN SOME CRAZY PLACES! GLAD TO BE HERE!”

Pirelli
Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director
“It was fantastic to see such brilliantly close racing all the way down the field, from the start to the finish of the Grand Prix. To some extent this was down to the fact that there was only a small performance gap between the two compounds, meaning that we saw lots of different thinking on strategy. On this occasion, there was no clear advantage in starting on particular compound when it came to overall race time. The high temperatures – the highest we have seen all year so far – made managing thermal degradation a particular challenge, which rewarded the drivers with the best strategy and smoothest driving style. There was a clearly an issue with the tyre on Felipe Massa’s Ferrari, which we are investigating at the moment. We’ve seen one sidewall cut and one at the top of the tread, and we’re currently trying to find out what caused those cuts.”

Hembery – “It isn’t that Lotus has an advantage, it’s that, less Kimi and Seb, you all drive like fucking idiots.”

Renault Sport
Remi Taffin, Renault Sport F1 head of track operations
“A great result for all at Renault Sport F1, with a clean sweep of the podium for the second consecutive year in Bahrain. It’s also the first time in a year that an engine manufacturer has done this so we can be really proud of the result. Coming at a tough track like Bahrain, where the heat, lack of humidity and general ambient conditions put lots of pressure on the engine internals, it’s an even more satisfying result. While Sebastian’s win and the two Lotuses on the podium is the highlight of the day for us, there are a number of other positive areas. The performance of the two Williams was stronger and Pastor was not too far away from scoring the first points of the season. Equally the Caterhams have made a big step forward here and now seem to be back in front of the Marussias. Having this depth of performance across all our partners is obviously what we want to do – and having two fighting for the championship is really an ideal way to be in the championship. We’ve got a number of areas to focus on now in the break before the start of the European season, not least with the teams bringing new upgrade packages, so we’ll celebrate this one and then get back to the hard work to try and repeat it in Spain!”

Taffin – Can everybody stop with the “Renault Alliance” jokes now, please!??

Friday Practice, Translated

Posted on April 20, 2013 by Fygar

In fact, it is true: every time a driver bitches about the tyres, an angel gets their wings.

Thanks for the link, Bernie!

Lotus
Kimi Raikkonen, P1 – 1:35.345, 9th; P2 – 1:34.154, 1st
“It’s nice to be fastest but you never know what the others are doing; we just stick to our programme and don’t take too much notice of what else is happening. I actually made a mistake through the final corners on my fastest lap, so there’s still more time to be found. It’s tricky to get the setup right here and the wind can make a big difference; it might work for you one way but make things more tricky the other. It wasn’t a bad start today; things aren’t exactly where we want them but we’re reasonably fast, so let’s see what we can do from here.”

RAI – “See? While all you little bitches are changing your diapers and crying because daddy won’t give you different tyres, I am quietly kicking all of your asses. Even, EVEN if I don’t win this race or the Driver’s Championship, I’ll earn the begrudging respect of the most devoted non-Lotus fan becauseI don’t spend half my life bitching about shit I can’t control!!!!”

Romain Grosjean, P1 – 1:35.611, 10th; P2 – 1:34.631, 7th
“The new chassis feels good. Today we’ve been working on getting the right correlation between chassis, setup and tyres to extract everything we want from it. It’s easy to know what you want, the difficult bit is getting the little details sorted, but we’re getting there and it’s been a positive day. We’ve seen that Kimi was fastest today so that gives us a great target for tomorrow.”

GRO – “7th?! I told you assholes to let me smash up the nose and wing before I went out there!!”

Alan Permane, Lotus trackside operations director
“It was a fairly standard Friday for us, which is a nice way to start the weekend. We looked at setup work in the morning before moving to longer runs, higher fuel race pace and degradation analysis on both tyre compounds in the afternoon, with no problems or interruptions to the programme. We were able to push both allocated compounds of tyres pretty well in the hot conditions today and generally the cars are well balanced. Romain’s running a new chassis and overall is happy with the car so we’re looking forward to an exciting qualifying session tomorrow.”

Permane – “Except for Roman’s useless bitching, could anyone love life more than me right now? Maybe Kanye West, he is tapping all the best asses, right? Other than him: I wouldn’t trade places with anyone else in the world. I see Horner in the Director’s lounge, in a corner, crying, an ashtray full of butts on the table in front of him, holding his head in his hands and I just laugh and laugh and laaaauuugh.”

Red Bull
Mark Webber, P1 – 1:35.101, 7th; P2 – 1:34.184, 2nd
“I would have liked to have got some more running in P2, but I still think we learned what we expected today. Saturdays are perhaps becoming less important overall than they used to be, but they’re still important in terms of traffic. You don’t want to be in too much traffic on Sunday, as the tyres don’t like being disturbed and wear more which will shorten your first stint – so you still need to be in a good position. We still have areas to improve on the car. Lotus and Ferrari look strong and Mercedes is there too.”

WEB – “I keep getting these scrawled notes in my mailbox. They say: ‘Mark, This is God. I’m not sure why. Maybe you’re just too good-looking. Yo, sorry, but, I JUST HATE YOUR GUTS. Love, God.'”

Sebastian Vettel, P1 – 1:34.790, 4th; P2 – 1:34.282, 3rd
“It’s pretty close. If you look at the opposition then Ferrari and Lotus were strong today and I think it will be close in qualifying. It’s important to work with the tyres around the track. I wasn’t so happy with my short runs today – but that’s why we have the Friday practice sessions I guess; I was happier with the longer runs. The tyres still seem to be the dominating factor. The car seems quick, so we have to make sure we use that and then we should be on the right page.”

VET – I am so glad to be in Bahrain! All these protestors, taking rubber bullets from some King or something. For once, it’s nice not to be the biggest asshole in the country where we’re racing.

Ferrari
Fernando Alonso, P1 – 1:34.564, 2nd; P2 – 1:34.310, 4th
“It was a positive day and we are reasonably pleased with how the car behaved. We had no major problems and more importantly, we didn’t have to make any radical changes to the F138 to adapt it to this track and its long straights and slow corners, characteristics which I like a lot and usually produce a great show in the race. Unfortunately, the wind and sand make everything a bit more complicated here, because the track surface never gets completely clean. However, the initial feelings are good and I think we can be up in the leading group tomorrow, a group that is all within the same two, maximum three-tenths. We have not yet decided if we will use the aero updates we tried in the morning. It is not yet completely clear how they worked and in the afternoon, we concentrated on comparing the two tyre compounds we have for this race. Ahead of us is another long evening of studying data to choose the best strategy and set-up for qualifying and the race.”

ALO – Oh. My. GOD. Did you hear that, you fucking assholes? I’m, like, pretending to be worried about the wind. .. and the sand. We’re thinking we might put this wing on the car that makes it go even FASTER. . .Or, we might not. Seriously: at this point, we really are totally fucking with all of you. Maybe I’ll “bitch” about the tyres, just to make it seem like I care. Really, the only thing that scares me are those ice dragons that always seen to be around Kimi. . . What? What do you mean: ‘What ice dragons?’ You SEE THEM, right?! Oh, fuck.”

Felipe Massa, P1 – 1:34.487, 1st; P2 – 1:34.552, 6th
“Everything went well today, even if it’s not easy to say at the moment where we will be on Sunday. Car balance was good and it behaved well in all conditions, even if we suffered a bit with tyre wear, especially at the rear. It’s pretty normal to have significant degradation in such high temperatures and on this front, we have a lot of work to do to prepare for the race. On the medium tyres, the F138 worked really well, even over a long run, but the key on Sunday will be managing the degradation of both compounds, as well as deciding on whether or not to use the updates we tried here this morning.”

MAS – “Fuck me, I need a hotter girlfriend.”

Pat Fry, Ferrari chassis director

“Of the aerodynamic updates we tried this morning, some worked well, while with others we have yet to decide if we will use them this weekend, because it is still too early to say what real advantage they bring. There was not enough time to test them fully, but I’m still pleased at how we managed to get through the work programme planned for both cars. In the afternoon session, we had a good balance on the hard tyre, while we found it a little bit more difficult with the Medium. On this compound, Fernando was unable to improve his time, partly down to traffic, but I’m sure that tomorrow he will find a way to go better. Race pace seems good here and now we face a careful analysis of all the data we gathered to see where we are compared to our main rivals.”

Fry – “Muhahahahahaaaaaaaa! MUHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Force India
Paul di Resta, P1 – 1:34.949, 5th; P2 – 1:34.543, 5th
“As Fridays go it’s been positive and we’ve achieved as much as we could realistically have hoped for. The car is working well and responding as we expected, and we’ve already got a reasonable idea of where we stand. There is still some optimising to do, as always, but if we can take another step forward tonight we should be in a strong position going into qualifying.”

RES – “It’s ‘Force India’! Who the fuck am I kidding?”

Adrian Sutil, P1 – 1:35.119, 8th; P2 – 1:34.932, 9th
“Lots of laps and lots of things to evaluate today, but I’m still not totally comfortable with the car – either for short or long runs. It all feels very low grip at the moment so the set-up is not quite right for me yet. As for the tyres, there are no real concerns. My long runs looked competitive and both the medium and hard compounds seem to be working well for us in the high temperatures – as they did in Malaysia.”

SUT – “I am seriously considering not hitting Paul this weekend. OK, hey, when do we go back to Australia?”

Mercedes

Nico Rosberg, P1 – 1:34.621, 3rd; P2 – 1:34.666, 8th
“Our test programme was pretty good today in that we managed to complete everything on our plan. However it’s clear that we weren’t as strong as on the Fridays of the previous three race weekends. The car had a lot of understeer and the race will be very tough on the rear tyres. The problem is that when you want to save the rear tyres, you try to set up the car with more understeer and that costs you time over one lap. So it’s all about finding the right compromise. We’ve still got some work to do tonight to find a good balance for tomorrow and the race.”

ROS – “This car is like a Republican. Booooo, Compromise!”

Lewis Hamilton, P1 – 1:35.792, 13th; P2 – 1:34.976, 10th
“We worked as hard as we could today but couldn’t quite get the balance of the car to where it needs to be. I had some issues in P1 which we were able to improve for this afternoon so that’s a positive, but we need to identify where we are losing time and find more performance. We have changed the set-up of the car to what we thought would suit this track but we need to look at that and make sure it is the right direction to go. The heat here is so hard on the tyres so another positive is that we did as many laps as possible to look at long runs and race preparation. We’re not as far off as we might look today but there is a lot of hard work ahead and it will be a tough battle for us this weekend.”

HAM – “We worked as hard as we could this weekend. Except for when I was re-tweeting tweets with the N-word in the hashtags. I’m fucking pissed at Kimi for taking away the tyres as a valid excuse. Shit, people are going to start thinking I have some sort of control over the outcome! Bless.”

Ross Brawn, Mercedes team principal
“Neither driver enjoyed the same good balance today that we achieved during practice at the past three races and, in the hot conditions, that proved quite damaging for the tyre condition and therefore overall pace. We got a good read on how the two tyre types compare and were also able to compare some set-up items such as downforce levels to assess their impact over long and short runs. There is a lot of data to analyse and clear areas for improvement, so we will be working late into the night in order to find better solutions for tomorrow.”

Brawn – “I give it ’til Monaco. After that, Lewis is going to be tweeting telemetry between that inspirational bullshit and pictures of Roscoe.”

McLaren
Jenson Button, P1 – 1:35.069, 6th; P2 – 1:35.356, 11th
“Today’s sessions were very productive for us. We completed some useful investigative work this morning before focusing on longer runs this afternoon. It’s very difficult to know exactly what to do with set-up. This is a big traction circuit, with lots of low-speed exits and a few high-speed corners too, and that puts a lot of load into the rear tyres. The tyres are behaving a bit strangely here – driving conservatively doesn’t seem to help their wear-life, so there’s only so much you can do without damaging your outright pace. But we’ve tried a few things, and we’ll get there. I’ve already got a good feeling that we’ve found a set-up and a direction for tomorrow that will be more competitive. There’s a lot we can take away from today that will help us for tomorrow.”

BUT – “I’m so good-looking, I no longer care. Hey! Anyone want to watch a YouTube of Sergio literally being shat upon? We could watch it in my Estrella de Oro bus and have a Margarita! There’s this button…”

Sergio Perez, P1 – 1:35.640, 11th; P2 – 1:35.589, 13th
“We managed to complete our full run-plan in both the morning and afternoon, which was a positive, but it’s going to be a difficult weekend for us. Although we’ll probably be fighting to get into Q3, there’s still plenty of potential for having a good race on Sunday. The team has shown before that, with solid preparation, we can run a clever strategy on Sunday, and I think we have enough raw material from today to help us race strongly this weekend. So, scoring points is a realistic ambition for us here in Bahrain.”

PER – “Monday, they love my passion and curiosity. Thursday, they’re questioning my drive and abilities. There’s more fucking mind-gaming going on here than the second draft of the script for ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’.”

Toro Rosso
Jean-Eric Vergne, P1 – 1:36.014, 14th; P2 – 1:35.506, 12th
“A hot day in the office, but it’s fine because you get to breathe some cooler fresh air going down the straights. It seems our pace is similar to that in China, at the end of a day when everything worked well. It’s all looking quite positive and I got a good feeling from the car. As for the tyres, the lap time difference between the prime and option is not as great as in China, but the heat means there is quite a lot of thermal degradation which will make life quite tricky in the race.”

VER – “Unlike the oppressed citizens of Bahrain, I, for one, am happy to be here!”

Daniel Ricciardo, P1 – 1:36.485, 15th; P2 – 1:35.761, 14th
“The first day here is quite complicated as the track is always dusty in the morning and that makes setting the car up rather tricky as the track is always improving. You are obliged therefore not to get too carried away in terms of making lots of changes. In the afternoon, we were tempted to make some changes and I’m not sure they were an improvement. So tonight, we must look at the data and decide which direction to go in tomorrow. We did a lot of laps, so we have plenty of data to study and I believe we have a good platform to work from. The option which I tried this afternoon is obviously going to be quicker for qualifying, but the gap is not as great as last weekend. It pays not to push the tyres too hard I think. The weather? I come from Perth, so I’ve been looking forward to some sun for a while now.”

RIC – “If we change anything, we might fuck up something on this barely-functioning car. Don’t even look at the car. I said, DON’T LOOK AT IT!!!”

Sauber
Nico Hulkenberg, P1 – 1:36.755, 17th; P2 – 1:36.133, 15th
“We were able to run our practice programme as planed today. Everything went quite smoothly. In terms of performance, there is still quite a lot of work for us to do. I expected this circuit might highlight some of the weaknesses of the car, but I think there is some potential. I’m still not happy with the balance of the car, but I think we can find more performance tomorrow if we sort out the balance. We have a long night ahead of us to try and maximise everything for this weekend.”

HUL – “I am totally looking forward to leading some random, mid-race, laps, thus creating the impression that I know what I’m doing. As always, by the end, it’ll be me and MAS in 9th and 11th, trying to figure out who the fuck we pissed off.”

Esteban Gutierrez, P1 – 1:37.214, 18th; P2 – 1:36.616, 18th
“I think we managed to improve the balance of the car in the second session compared to this morning. The first session was a bit tricky in terms of the balance of the car. We were trying a lot of different settings and measurements, but everything came together this afternoon. However, we are still missing speed in the slow corners due to lack of stability and traction. We will look at the data and work on these characteristics so we can create a car with a better margin.”

GUT – “See, in Mexico, we just willingly let the same party run the joint for 70 years. I don’t know why these people are even trying. The less energy you spend fighting, the more energy you can spend drinking. Huh? They can’t drink here? THE FUCK??!”

Williams
Pastor Maldonado, P1 – 1:36.498, 16th; P2 – 1:36.279, 16th
“We completed our planned programme today. We tested some development parts this morning and then we were back to working on set-up for the weekend this afternoon. Our short run pace isn’t as strong, but on higher fuel and used tyres the car felt better. This is what we were expecting today, and so we’ll continue to push hard tomorrow.”

MAL – “What is this? Like, three races and I haven’t hit anybody?! Check that shit! It has to be some sort of record!”

Valtteri Bottas, P1 – 1:35.783, 12th; P2 – 1:36.579, 17th
“It wasn’t a bad day for us. We gathered some valuable data in FP1 to help us to evaluate which direction to continue with the development of the FW35. In FP2 we completed some longer runs on the medium tyre, and now we will go through the data to see where we can improve as the tyre wear is big here, especially on the rears.”

BOT – “Huh-uh-huh: I said ‘rears’.”

Caterham

Charles Pic, P1 – 1:37.850s, 19th; P2 – 1:37.313, 19th
“We’ve made some progress today and I think we can be quite pleased with the job we’ve done in both FP1 and FP2. In the morning session we ran the car in the same configuration we raced in China and ran through a pretty normal FP1 program, using just the hard tyres and working on the baseline setup. In FP2 we ran a couple of new parts at the back of the car and saw more rear grip which is positive. We did find that meant there was quite a bit of understeer that we’ll need to work on for quali, but the performance run time was a good sign of where we are heading, so overall today has been ok.”

PIC – “The clag here is really dusty. They say: ‘Just eat it with some hummus!’ Hummus makes me so gassy! I don’t know: maybe I’ll try it with some baba ganoush. Or some blood of the oppressed. Some of the dignitaries at the track have said that’s really tasty.”

Giedo van der Garde, P1 – no time; P2 – 1:37.970, 22nd
“After sitting out the morning session I went straight back to work in FP2 and ran through a normal Friday afternoon program that included work on both tyre compounds on short and long runs. The tyre deg here was pretty big, especially on the mediums, but they’re coming up to temperature well and that suggests that if we can manage the deg levels this track might suit us better than the last race in China.”

GAR – “Still, with the tyres. Just like a big boy!”

Heikki Kovalainen, P1 – 1:38.401s, 20th
“It was good to be back in the car and great to be back at work with the team. The main priority today was to help give my impressions of the 2013 car in the spec it ran in for the first three races this year against the car I raced last year, and to give my feedback on the 2013 tyres. The first impression I had was that this car, which is obviously closer to the 2012 car than what will be raced for most of the rest of the season, is certainly trickier to find a balance on than the 2012 car, and the 2013 tyres go off a lot faster than last years. After one session I clearly haven’t had enough time in the car to find out how much we could change the handling with setup alterations, but I’ve been able to give the team a lot of feedback that I think will be useful this weekend on setup and tyres, and looking ahead to Spain where we’ll have more new parts.”

KOV – “No, seriously, I am so fucking glad to be here.”

Marussia
Max Chilton, P1 – 1:39.445, 21st; P2 – 1:37.313, 20th
“I’m pleased that I was able to complete plenty of running in both sessions today. This is especially important given the tough conditions we are facing, which are obviously impacting quite a lot on the way the car is behaving here. The heat is making it difficult to find good grip. We’ve tried a few things and gathered plenty of data, all of which will need some careful thought overnight, but I’m sure we can reach some conclusions which will improve things for tomorrow.”

CHI – “YOU GUYS! THERE IS SO MUCH SAND IN THIS DESERT! AND IT IS MAD HOT HERE! MAN! IT’S SO HOT, IT’S MAKING ME JUST A BIT CRANKY! STILL: SO GLAD TO BE HERE!”

Jules Bianchi, P1 – no time; P2 – 1:37.363, 21st
“It was not an easy task getting up to speed this afternoon. Having watched and listened to the challenges Max and Rodolfo were experiencing this morning, it was clear that FP2 would not be straightforward for me either. The heat is playing a big part in the way the car has been performing but I think, for my part, we were limited by the time to improve on these issues in the space of an afternoon. Given this, I am not so unhappy with my time as I was making progress and I am sure that, overnight, we will find a good solution for tomorrow.”

BIA – “Sometimes, man, I just get tired of all of Max’s positivity bullshit.”

Rodolfo Gonzalez, P1 – 1:40.215, 22nd
“Although my first experience of the MR02 was quite brief, it provided a good start for my FP1 programme at various races this year. With my programme, I had actually experienced and achieved quite a few different things before the problem with the gearbox. I felt comfortable with the car and I could see that Max and Jules were going to have quite a challenging day with the heat and the track conditions. I’m looking forward to being able to make a wider contribution to the team’s performance during a Grand Prix weekend and next time will be better for sure.”

GON – Holy fuck! At least there were some other newbies who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing? WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO RACE IN THIS HEAT?! Oh, someone just handed me a stack of hundreds labelled ‘oil money’. What was I saying?”

Pirelli

Paul Hembery, Pirelli motorsport director
“As expected, track evolution played a prominent role in today’s action, with many of the competitors not running until later in each session in order to take advantage of more rubber being laid onto the track. The track is going to keep on evolving as the weekend goes on, so we are still not seeing the full picture yet. Wear and degradation is where we expect it to be at this point during the weekend, with the rear tyres worked particularly hard here, but when it comes to the race the cars will certainly be able to complete longer stints than we are seeing at the moment. Already some drivers are completing more than 15 laps on the hard tyre, so we are certainly on track to see a three-stop strategy for the race, although it’s possible that some teams will attempt a two-stopper. Once we’ve analysed the data from tonight and seen the times from tomorrow’s final free practice session, we should be able to have a clear idea of the optimal strategy.”

Hembrey – “Have I mentioned to anyone that my body heart actually pumps the tears of little bitch drivers in the place of blood? No? Oh. well, no matter: keep up your bitching, you assholes. I’ll suck Bernie’s cock for a thousand years if it means I keep getting the tyre contract. I’ll fill my swimming pool with your salty, whiney, floor-pounding, air-kicking, grown-men-pouting tears and laugh every time I do a cannon ball, splashing Kimi, who iis sleeping poolside, vodka bottles strewn about like so many talons of the ice dragons.

Pirelli, Translated

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Fygar

Pirelli technicians, seen here, use magic to add the essence of soiled diapers to each tyre. This special elixir is formulated to make all teams, less Lotus, CRY LIKE LITTLE WHINY ASS TITTY BABIES.

Thanks to F1 Junkie for the link!

Apr.17 (GMM) Paul Hembery has rubbished suggestions Lotus and Ferrari are getting an unfair advantage in 2013.

One theory doing the rounds is that Lotus’ E21 is kind to the otherwise heavily-degrading tyres this year because Pirelli’s test car is the 2010-spec R30 — which was designed by Enstone based Lotus’ former incarnation, Renault.

“We have certainly done everything to avoid any team getting any advantage from our test data,” Pirelli’s Paul Hembery is quoted by German magazine Sport Bild.

He confirmed reports that rival teams rejected a proposal to share the burden of providing Pirelli with a test car.

“We even proposed that they alternate with each other to test our tyres, but none of our proposals proved popular,” said Briton Hembery.

“So they can’t start complaining now.”

Hembery also rejected a wild theory that Ferrari obtained an advantage through the shared nationality of its lead driver, Fernando Alonso, and main Pirelli tester Jaime Alguersuari.

He smiled: “Someone told me actually that Jaime and Fernando don’t even talk.

“Anyway, how could a comment be converted into a design?” he wondered. “That’s hard to accomplish.

“And even if you could get something from it, it would be pretty minimal.”

PIrelli – Oh. My. GOD. You little BITCHES. Shut. The. Fuck. UP. McLaren! Shut up! Your car sucks! Perez is not panning out. It’s not the tyres! Red Bull! Shutthefuckup! Your drivers hate each other! You can’t get enough gas in your car, um, TWICE in two years. The tyres are the problem?! Let me see.. . . I think I have a mirror around here. . . Here we go: C’mere. Look in this mirror. See that? THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM!! Hammy! You, you. . . Oh, just shut up. Oh, yes, the secret is that Pirelli is an Italian company and ‘Nando is kicking ass, so there must be a conspiracy. Guess what I heard the other day? The fucking company that makes all the asphalt for all the racetracks is FINNISH!!!!!! They send the asphalt formula to Kimi via fucking ice dragon.

SHUT UP!!!!!!!

In Case Anyone Doubts the Accuracy of the Translations

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Fygar

Can you believe they give me all the awesome toys and give none to Roman and then I just smash the toys and I STILL WIN?!!

Thanks to F1Zone for confirmation!

Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen says he cannot understand why people are complaining about Pirelli’s tyres.

Several drivers, most vocally Mark Webber, have complained that Formula 1 has become too tyre centric during the early part of 2013.

But Raikkonen, who won in Australia, believes that using the tyres correctly is simply part of racing.

“I think you can push on these tyres, but it’s never perfect. You cannot always push 100%. I think they are very good in qualifying and have good grip, so it’s up to you and you have to look after them a bit more in the race,” he said.

“It’s not really any different from last year – at least for us anyway – so I don’t really understand why people are complaining.”

Team principal Eric Boullier believes it is up to the teams to understand the tyres.

“As a sport we asked our tyre supplier, Pirelli, to provide us with tyres which encourage different strategies and adapting to this is part of the competition,” he said.

“We’ve seen some great racing so far this year and Pirelli can take some of the credit for this. We are all allocated the same tyres so it’s up to us as teams and the drivers in the cars to make the most of them.”

As if any translation were required!

Very Old Person, Stirling Moss, Translated

Aside

“This is not what I meant when I said, ‘Blow me!’ Have you no mental strength!?”

Cheers to NBCSports for the link.

Sir Stirling Moss says he doubts women have the mental strength to be successful racing drivers.

Moss, who was the runner-up in the Formula One world championship for four consecutive seasons, made the claim in a BBC Radio 5 Live program which airs this evening.

“We’ve got some very strong and robust ladies, but, when your life is at risk, I think the strain of that in a competitive situation will tell when you’re trying to win,” said Moss.

“The mental stress I think would be pretty difficult for a lady to deal with in a practical fashion. I just don’t think they have aptitude to win a Formula 1 race.”

Williams test driver Susie Wolff says Moss’s remarks made her “cringe”.

Although no woman has driven in F1 since 1992 they continue to race competitively in other categories. Already this year IndyCar race winner Danica Patrick took pole position for the NASCAR Daytona 500 and Simona de Silvestro finished sixth in the IndyCar season-opener in Miami.

Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone has previously said he would like to see Patrick racing in the series, but admits it is unlikely.

During his F1 career Moss raced against Maria Teresa de Filippis. He said: “We welcomed it. We thought the fact ladies came into the sport as a new group of people was a jolly good thing. She [De Filippis] was treated as just another competitor.”

Moss – Yes, yes, yes. Bumble-dee, bum. Walking along, being old. Being an old sod. La la la. . . I do say, there, old chap. . Eh? What’s that? Come closer, old boy. Eh? What’s that?! Ladies in F1?! Crikey! It takes a lot of mental strength to drive into the back of other cars! It takes a lot of mental strength to bitch about tyres. Would a woman have the aptitude to prevaricate about the real reason she lost? Hah! Ho, ho, ho. . .Eh? What’s that? You say when old anachronisms like me spout off about shit that has long since changed, inevitably, we live long enough to see the change happen and we die feeling stupid, having tarnished our previously, mostly excellent reputation? Shit. Ah, well. Pip-pip!

Memo to VET and Marko

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Fygar

Webber: “I can see your ball sack shrinking.”

Psychologically, it must be very hard for you to deal with a guy who won’t sink to your level. It’s called fucking diplomacy.

Q: (Jonathan Legard – BBC Radio Five Live) Mark, how much have you resolved everything in your own mind over what happened at the last race and how to go forward and I suppose linked in there, is the haircut part of the new mean look?

MW: No, definitely not mate, the haircut’s not… it was a little bit of a screw up. Once he’d started he was on his way. Haircut is not part of the new look or new feel. Going forward, mate, I think we know everything that happened; obviously in Malaysia there was plenty of interest from everyone, other teams, media etc, but for me myself mate, it’s not an unusual situation and I’m looking forward to racing here this weekend and getting on with it. When you’re at the front in Formula One there’s always stuff going down so it just depends on how much is going down that you’ve got to manage. In the end, for me, I’m looking forward to driving the car here, putting in first gear and driving out of the garage and getting down there to feel what the car’s like on the circuit. That’s what I’m looking forward to, mate.

McLaren: Upgrades, bitches!

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Fygar

Yep, and all you fuckers were all, “Oh, no: Windows ME will be a total upgrade from 98! And I was all, “EEEEyyeah, maybe we should wait ’til XP comes out. ‘It’ll be more user-friendly!’ You said. ‘It’s more stable!’ You said. Fucking idiots. You know what? Any dumbass who upgraded to Windows ME? You can run Button’s fucking Twitter! I’m fucking sick of turning down marriage requests from all the fangirls!”

profanef1

F1 Translation Services

Tag Archives: Formula One

2013 Monaco GP Post-Race Driver’s Quotes, Translated

2013 Spanish GP, Post-Race Quotes, Translated

Pirelli, Translated

2013 Bahrain GP, Post-Race Driver’s Quotes, Translated

Friday Practice, Translated

Pirelli, Translated

In Case Anyone Doubts the Accuracy of the Translations

Very Old Person, Stirling Moss, Translated

Aside

Memo to VET and Marko

McLaren: Upgrades, bitches!