Q: Do you think you've escaped lightly by finishing third on a day like this?
“A little bit, but we can't carry on for much longer like this without it getting to be a problem. But we do think we got out of jail today. It looked pretty grim at one stage of the race, but fortunately the strategy got it back together and Michael drove a very good race.”

Q: You must have suspected all weekend that it wasn't going to be easy…
“We've got a peculiar situation that we expect to be competitive in the race, the way the tyre's going and everything works in practice seems OK. And then we hit the race and we're sort of left for dead. We have to put our thinking caps on. We're not quick enough at the moment.”

Q: People are asking Michael is Ferrari are in crisis. What would your reply be?
“We're always in crisis when we don't win a race! I guess it's nice to be measured that on the odd occasion that we don't win a race, we're in crisis. People like to see and talk about those sort of things. The team is not in crisis, the team is facing up to the challenge. It's the same group of people who've done the job for the last few years and I hope will continue to do the job in the future.”

Q: is your main challenger now Williams?
“It looks that way, it looks like McLaren are in trouble with their new car, and it looks like Williams have come on strong. But don't forget in the last race Kimi Raikkonen would have run away with that with the old McLaren, so it's very up and down. If we can stay in touch in these difficult races and come back later in the season then we still stand a good chance of retaining our championship.”

Q: From a strategic point of view what was the goal today – to win the race or to control McLaren?
“Well obviously we started off hoping we could win the race. When it became apparent that we weren't able to do that, then we concentrated on making sure we finished in front of McLaren, which we were able to do, which I was quite pleased about. But on the other hand we didn't win the race, so that was disappointing.”

Q: Michael lost a place at the start and in the pits. You must have been concerned at that point…
“The place we lost at the start wasn't so good, but the place we lost in the pits [to Coulthard] was because of the way we were going to develop our strategy, and it all came good in the end. The thing about a three-stop race is it's not about just being in front after the first pit stops, it's being in front after the last one. And that's what happened.”

Q: At what moment in the race did you see a chance to beat the McLarens?
“The fact that Michael was able to stay close to them. When they did the short second stint, and they also did a short first stint, we knew that they had to come in and do a long last stint. We also knew that they were putting their new tyres on at that early stage of the race, and they weren't going to have new tyres at the end of the race. We were hoping that it would all work out, and Michael drove very well to give us a chance, and it all worked out.”

Q: After his spin Rubens switched to two stops. In hindsight would that have been better than three for a normal race?
“I think three was OK, but with Rubens he would have been quick but not using it, so we opted for two just to overcome that.”

Q: Is the current tyre situation related to the rubber going down during the race?
“I don't know to be honest. That's what we've got to try to puzzle out. The whole package is not as good as it should be.”

Q: Is Silverstone going to be a difficult weekend for you is that one where you expect to do better?
“I'd normally say it should be good for us, because we had a very good test there a couple of weeks ago. But we don't seem to be able to repeat our performances when we get into the race, for whatever reason. I'm going to be cautious, but we did have a good test there, and were able to do lots of race simulations, and everything looked very good. I hope that proves to be the case at the race.”