San Marino F1 GP - Fantastic duel between Schumacher and Alonso

Tsutomu Tomita - Team Principal, Panasonic Toyota F1: "We always knew this would be one of the worst circuits of the year for us, so the team did an excellent job to finish with two cars in the points. Jarno had a very difficult race, struggling with oversteer and lack of traction, so he did well to hold his position as well as he did during the pitstops. Ralf had a poor start which compromised his race and meant he was always in traffic. But he also did a good job and excellent pitstop work from the team meant he was able to get past both Williams cars at the second stop. I'd also like to congratulate Luca Marmorini and his engine team for getting both engines to the finish again after a tough race in Bahrain. Overall, to come away with second place in the championship without losing too much ground to the teams behind us is a good result. Now we must work hard to build on this performance over the next few races."

Nick Heidfeld, BMW WilliamsF1, eighth: “I lost a couple of places off the line and we obviously have to improve our starts. After that, Jarno held up the pack where I was for most of the time. I think towards the end of the race my pace was good enough to collect some points, but of course we want to be more competitive than just scoring points, so we must find more speed. I could catch up with Jarno and Ralf very quickly, but overtaking on this circuit was another matter. At the last pit-stop Ralf Schumacher got in front of me by forcing me to brake hard and avoid a crash.”

Sam Michael, Technical Director WilliamsF1: “It is obviously both a disappointing result and day overall. We had a poor start and we spent the whole race in traffic. Clearly we have to improve this for the future. That said, the car's competitiveness was not as bad as it might have appeared due to the traffic but it's certainly not where we expected to be. We had no mechanical problems at all.”

Mario Theissen, BMW Motorsport Director: “Congratulations to Michael Schumacher for an extraordinary race, even though Fernando Alonso won in the end. For us, on the other hand, after a reasonable qualifying it was a disappointing race outcome. Both the drivers were held up in traffic for most of the race, but at no time were they in a position to get to the top. We had no technical problems and reliability was there, simply not the speed.”

Mark Webber, BMW WilliamsF1, ninth: “From the start, Trulli got past me straight away and so too did Sato, but I was able to recover this position at Tosa. After that I had to sit behind Jarno during the first stint, and it happened that we pitted on the same lap and I could not pass him. So I tried to pass Jarno on the track at the Variante Alta but while having a go, I had a big moment and let Villeneuve through. The last part of the race was difficult as I was struggling because the engine of my car was slowed down, having already run two GPs.”

Tonio Liuzzi, debut race for Red Bull F1, tenth: “I thought the race would be difficult for me because of fitness, but I feel pretty ok. The car was quite good really. The balance was good, but there just wasn’t enough speed, so we have to improve. It was quite difficult to keep the car on the track ‚ it felt as if I was sliding all over the place. I wanted to overtake Mark (Webber) so I tried to make something crazy but it didn’t work. Can I say that? It feels great to have done my first race and I can’t wait for testing to prepare for Barcelona.”

Christian Horner, Sporting Director, Red Bull F1: “Obviously 11th and 13th is pretty disappointing after three consecutive point-scoring races. Tonio drove an excellent race on his grand prix debut. He was consistent throughout and made a very solid start to his F1 career. David had a couple of knocks from Massa and I think this damaged his car slightly. From a reliability point of view we’re ok, but we need to take a step forward in performance. We hope to see that at the forthcoming test in Jerez.

Gunther Steiner, Technical Director, Red Bull F1: “I am not that happy with how we performed in the race today. But the car was reliable and didn’t have any problems. In comparison with qualifying I think this is the best we could have achieved.”

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