2016 European Grand Prix Driver Reaction

The first ever European Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit was won by Nico Rosberg, with the Mercedes driver extending his lead in the championship.

© Mercedes

Sebastian Vettel and Sergio Perez completed the podium, while Lewis Hamilton recovered from his qualifying crash to finish fifth. Here's what the 2016 Formula 1 grid had to say after round eight of the season.

Nico Rosberg

"I am so happy to win here in Baku. I really felt at one with the car in a way I've never felt before. I didn't have the feeling that something would go wrong at any point today. The car was awesome this weekend, so thank you so much to the team for this. I already began to sense it in Qualifying yesterday, this perfect feeling.

"We expected a Safety Car moment in this race, so I was hoping that it wouldn't happen as that tends to mess up the race in general. But it was a pretty straightforward afternoon for me at the front. There was only one little concern when I felt that I was down on power a bit in the middle of the race.

© Mercedes

 "The engineers weren't allowed to tell me what I had to do, so I had a look at my steering wheel and tried to fix it myself, which worked out well. Sagol! - which means 'thank you very much' - to Baku for this great weekend. I look forward to Austria now!"

Sebastian Vettel

"We can be very proud of what we achieved today, both cars got points. We were very bad off and slow on Friday and initially we didn’t know why. We changed a lot in the car, made big steps forward, and we finished second today. I think the way things went on the track was fantastic, but we can’t be entirely happy.

We lost a position with Kimi but he played nice team work, he was very kind to hand me the place. In the end it was a bit of a shame that we didn’t manage to finish second and third, but I think he was struggling quite a bit with his tyres. It was not a fresh set. I had a good feeling with the tyres, so I kept the first set a bit longer, even if after a couple of laps I wasn’t so confident.

"But later the tyres did recover and from that point it was good again. The season is long and I think there’s a lot of stuff happening here, but especially back in Maranello. Our President is pushing very hard, but in a good way. He is willing to understand, help us and to push us, as well.

"Ambition is high but, moving forward step by step, I am sure we will do the right things for this year and for the future to make sure we give the others a very hard time. We didn’t have a wonderful start of the season, even though the car has been good, but I think most of the times we didn’t fully use our opportunities. However, today we did a great job. We will keep doing the optimum and keep enhancing our chances to be there at the end of the year, but surely we know we have to pick up our game and improve the car."

Daniel Ricciardo

"At the start we put ourselves in a good position and the aim was to get Nico. We managed to hold second and I felt pretty good in the first few laps, especially as I could see Seb wasn’t catching me. After lap three we started to slide the rear and there was no way of controlling it.

"I went from being very optimistic about our race to being uncertain. I don’t think we had the wrong strategy, one stop would have been ideal but we had to adapt and were forced into a two stop race. We were slow in the first two stints but in the third one we managed to find some pace and I passed Hulkenburg, which was good fun.

"I think Max suffered the same issues so that’s just the way it went, I don’t think we could have done anything else today. We need to understand why because we usually perform well in hot races, like Singapore. Today was a bit unexpected. I got everyone’s hopes up yesterday by saying it could be the race of the season, It was, however, pretty uneventful."

© Williams Martini Racing

Valtteri Bottas

"Overall, it was a good day for us because the pace we had today wasn’t enough for any more. It felt like a good race from my side, and we managed to do the one-stop strategy which was definitely the best one today.

"I’m glad we could manage the tyres and get it to work because that made the sixth place possible. The team did a really good job with what we had today, the strategy and the pitstop. Now we need to work hard because we need better positions than this. We need to make the car quicker and then we can fight for another podium soon."

Sergio Perez

"I knew that the podium was possible today, but we really had to work hard for it. The key to my race was the great start I made to get around a Williams [Massa] and a Toro Rosso [Kvyat]. Then, in the first stint I was suffering with graining of my supsersoft tyres and we had to decide whether to wait for it to improve or to make an early stop.

"In the end, we stayed out longer, which was the right decision, but when I came out of the pits I struggled to warm-up the soft tyres and I was under big pressure from Lewis [Hamilton] behind. I pushed as hard as I could and opened up a gap, and then I focussed on looking after my tyres.

"I closed in on Kimi [Raikkonen] and I knew he had a penalty, but on the final lap I got very close to him and saw the opportunity to overtake him, so I took it. To be on the podium for a second time this year feels fantastic. The team has done a brilliant job and we are having an amazing year."

Kevin Magnussen

"I think this was a good race in terms of what we got out of it. We qualified second to last, started from the pit lane and finished fourteenth; that’s not too bad. We learnt about the car in some extreme areas of the set-up, which is good.

"The main thing to take away from this weekend is how the team kept their cool and stayed positive. They are winners; they have been world champions many times, so for them to qualify on the last row is very tough. And yet, you can see, their reaction has been strong."

Carlos Sainz Jr.

"It’s been a bit of a difficult weekend overall, and even though we were doing a good recovery in today’s race, unfortunately a suspension issue ended my race. It’s a shame, because I had positive feelings in the car and our strategy and pace was looking decent… But I know it will get better soon!

"As a driver, when this sort of thing happens, all you can do is forget about it quickly and work hard for the next race. We have to remember that we’ve had very good momentum from Barcelona up until now, so this little hiccup won’t disturb me: it was just an unproductive weekend. There wasn’t much more I could’ve done from my side today and I’m still happy with my season so far. I look forward to the next race in Austria."

Felipe Nasr

"Overall, I am satisfied with my performance today. I fought very hard from the beginning to the end, so we can be pleased with P12. We maximised our performance on track as well as on the strategy-side. I was close to the points today, but just not close enough. I am satisfied, but we are still not there with what we want to achieve. We want to score points, and we are all highly motivated to get there."

© McLaren

Jenson Button

"Obviously, I didn’t make it easy for myself starting 19th. I enjoyed the race, and I got everything out of the car, but that was all we could really do as we didn’t have the pace this weekend. I’m happy with my performance today. In terms of strategy, it was difficult to know the best way to go, but we’d struggled with graining on the Supersoft, so chose to pit relatively early.

"Then our pace was good on the Prime – I’m happy with that. It was also good to battle out there, especially when the other guy has the same equipment as you. In terms of outright performance, we’re not quite quick enough, so to come from 19th to 11th wasn’t too bad, particularly with the straight-line speed we had here.

"It was a fun race and I enjoyed it, but there are some improvements needed to raise our level of performance. I persevered as I always do when times are tough, and we’ll hopefully come out the other side."

Pascal Wehrlein

"Today is a bit of shame to be honest; we were hoping for much more. I think we were on quite a different strategy than the other guys; one that could really make the most of any chances, but only if the race came our way. We started on the Softs and I was happy with my position after the first lap but it was more difficult on the Soft than the Supersoft.

"Then we pitted and again I was really happy with my pace on the Medium tyre; I felt I could have closed the gap to the Saubers in front of me but I was running out of brakes. When I got to Turn 1 I simply had no brakes and there was no alternative but to stop. So nothing more to say, we just have to look ahead. I’ve really enjoyed this circuit and my first experience of Baku though."

Romain Grosjean

"The car felt very good at the beginning of the race and everything was going well. We then had a bit of rear (tyre) graining and we had to pit to go on to the soft tyres. The plan was to go to the end.

"We then had too much rubbish at the front of the radiators and we had to stop again to clean them. That extra stop cost us a lot of performance. We had to fit the medium tires to go to the end, as we didn’t have any more softs. We did our best, but we’re still not where we want to be."