Nico Rosberg had to settle for second place after starting from pole position, with Daniel Ricciardo finishing third. Here are some post-race thoughts from this year's grid. Ricciardo recovers after poor start:
"I’m happy with that. I could see the Mercedes for the first part of the race which was really cool, I don’t know if they were just chilling, but we seemed to have good pace. It was great to get ahead of the Williams and to get onto the podium.
"The start wasn’t very good, I have to put my hand up to that one, but the recovery was good so we didn’t really lose out. The pit stops were really good, Red Bull is known for being awesome in the pits and they showed it today."
"What an incredible place this is to go racing. We have such great support here and I have to say a massive thanks to the fans who have been awesome all weekend. I'm really grateful to have had the opportunity to be out front here. It's a very special feeling to have such an amazing car, an amazing team and to be on this incredible run. It's been an unbelievable job from the team all year so a big thanks to everyone here at the track and at the factories back home.
"We managed to correct the problems from qualifying today which was great and I pushed as hard as I could. For the overtake, I just stayed as close as possible to Nico and waited for the moment to be just close enough to throw it up the inside. This is a good circuit to be able to follow another car but it's still not easy.
"You have to judge the risk in these situations but I felt confident I could pull it off. Once I got past Nico, it was just about controlling the race. I'm very, very proud to now hold the record for the most Formula 1 wins for a British driver. I have to say, though, it's all thanks to the team and the car we have this year that I've been able to reach that landmark so quickly. Ten wins in a season is just... well, wow.
Anonymous run to 13th for Raikkonen:
"This weekend was very complicated and again today
in the race, I wasn’t able to give my
maximum. Up to the first stop, the car behaved well, but after fitting the mediums the situation got tricky, with
higher degradation than expected, so I lacked grip
and after a few laps I began to have problems with
the front end.
"I
tried to save the tyres in any way possible, slowing in some parts of the track and turning into the corners, but even
so I had to take on a set of softs earlier than expected, which meant I had to make a third stop in the closing stages.
Now we will continue to work to try and solve our problems. It won’t be easy, but we won’t give up all
the way to the
end of the last race."
Maldonado scores first points of 2014:
"It was a great fight from the very beginning; it felt good, the strategy was good and the car pace was surprisingly good! We were fully focused, keeping the pace and managing the tyres. We did lose out in the slow-speed corners but we were very competitive in the medium and high speed turns throughout the first and last sector."
That meant we could recover the time lost in the slow ones so we were in the mix. Overtaking was challenging because of the speed we have but we still took the fight to others for position which was great. Let’s keep pushing like that; I think we can do a good job in the next two races."
"I just went backwards today. The only fun bit of the afternoon was my fight with Fernando. But, apart from that, it was pretty dull out there. It’s unusual for our car to suffer tyre degradation as damaging as we did today, and I experienced particularly significant issues with the rears.
"Their surface temperatures were getting really hot, yet their core temperatures were dropping. That meant we were slipping and sliding around, and as a result I was really struggling compared with the drivers around me. Hopefully, Brazil will suit us a little bit better."
Perez disappointed with first-lap retirement:
"What happened today is really unfortunate. I made a move on Adrian [Sutil] at turn 15 when he left the door open, so I went up the inside. Then Adrian started to close the door and I had to try and brake later than him. By doing so I was unable to avoid contact with Kimi [Raikkonen], which caused me to make contact with Adrian also.
"I just didn’t expect Kimi to be in that position. It’s a big shame because I had a great chance to keep up my run of points finishes and I was determined to do well in such an important race. I feel very sorry for all my fans who came to support me this weekend and I’m disappointed I could not give them a race to remember."
Crash with Perez "needless" - Sutil:
"Unfortunately, it was a short race. I had a good start and was in a promising position. Sadly Sergio (Perez) crashed into my car, which was completely needless. It is very disappointing that we missed our biggest chance of points because of this move."
"We were competitive today and we deserved to score some points here in Austin. We had a fantastic pace until the last part of the Grand Prix when I managed to overtake Raikkonen, but unfortunately I damaged my front left tyre during the fight.
"I had too many vibrations and I had to pit again. It could have been a fantastic race and it's obviously disappointing when towards the end everything goes wrong. We couldn't have done anything better, but sometimes that's how it goes. I’m looking forward to Brazil, where hopefully we can achieve a better result."
Massa misses out on top three result:
"I had a very good start to get up to third place and we showed strong pace throughout the race, but unfortunately a slower than normal pit stop allowed Ricciardo to jump me and this could have cost us a podium which was possible.
"These things happen though and the team have been operating at a very high level with pit stops this season so we need to quickly move on from this one. On the whole we need to see this as a positive weekend as we have scored more points than our rivals in the constructors’ championship and we have good momentum for the final two races of the season."
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