A round-up of the best radio soundbites from the U.S. Grand Prix, where Kimi Raikkonen claimed a popular victory and Fernando Alonso had another weekend to forget on his farewell tour of Formula One.
“Nice and steady into the box…”
“You know when you tell me to go steady, I’m not going to go steady!”
“Yep, a leopard never changes his spots.”
Lewis Hamilton and race engineer Peter Bonnington share a light-hearted exchange during Friday practice as Mercedes prepares some pit-stop practice.
“Somehting just hit my head. Check the Halo and the front of the car.”
An alarmed Brendon Hartley reports back to Toro Rosso about unusual activity in the cockpit. It turned out his first hunch was correct, as a small piece of the Halo had come loose down COTA’s back straight.
“Yeah, I got held up by Grosjean in the last corner.”
“That was Magnussen.”
“Whatever.”
Carlos Sainz makes what seems like a now-customary complaint towards a Haas driver — though he isn’t too fussed by which one of them actually baulked him in Q2.
“How much did we miss it by?”
“Sixty thousand. Sixty thousand.”
“Ah f—! F—.”
F1 can be a game of inches sometimes. Sebastian Vettel cannot believe it after finding out he missed out on pole position by just 0.006 — he would start fifth anyway due to a penalty for a controversial red-flag infraction during practice.
“These guys are impossible to race with. Impossible!”
Feranndo Alonso doesn’t sound like a man who is going to miss F1 all that much. This was his reaction to being punted out on the opening lap by Williams driver Lance Stroll.
“Well done Kimi! Well done my friend.”
“Ah, thank-you. F—ing finally.”
It only took 2,044 days… Kimi Raikkonen is congratulated on his first win since March 2013.
“Well done, Max. That was a very, very mature drive. Fantastic. Really, really well done. Great job. You did a mega job with those tyres to get them that far. Nobody else could do that today so well done and enjoy the podium in your cowboy suit.”
“Haha, I will.”
Christian Horner congratulates Max Verstappen on another impressive performance and gives a nod to Red Bull’s special race suit design made especially for the Austin race.