Monte Carlo: Although Sebastian Vettel failed to win the Monaco GP, the three-time defending champion strengthened his overall lead heading into next month's race in Canada by finishing second behind Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg here on Sunday.

Sebastian Vettel said that he was happy and pleased with the result. “Overall I’m happy and pleased with the result, we know that it’s very difficult to overtake here. Congratulations to Nico, he did a very good job and had a very controlled race; I think he had the pace and the tyres to respond whenever we tried to get a little bit closer to him,” he said.

“I had a fantastic start, but there was no room! I think I could have gone past both Mercedes, but there was no space and I had to lift. Then Mark came and it was very tight into the first corner. I was a bit surprised by the slow pace of the opening laps – usually you expect two silver arrows in front of you, but they were more like buses today going for a cruise on the first couple of laps. But, the strategy for them was clear and they did a very good job. It was a good strategy from our team to get past Lewis. It was hard with the restarts, but we can be happy with the result. It was a good achievement by the team; we seem to like this place. Congratulations to everyone and thanks to all our partners – two cars on the podium is very good,” he added.

Meanwhile, Mark Webber, who finished third, said, “First of all congratulations to Nico, it’s a very special place to win here and he had a seamless weekend; that’s what you need to do here. Even though he started in the lead, you still have to pull it off so well done to him. For us, we knew we were a little bit against it starting on the second row, but I got an absolutely incredible start and it’s sod’s law that it’s the shortest run into the first corner here. Seb and I had nowhere to go, so we were lifting while Nico and Lewis looked like they had tricky ones. We will save some of those starts for future reference! Then after that it was basically about saving the tyres and making the one-stop work for us. It was predictable that if the race was going to stack up, then the two-stop was not really an option as you could have come back into traffic. We had to go pretty long and all the drivers were nursing the tyres – it was nice to get Lewis on the stops.”

Christian Horner, Team Principal said: “Second and third with the least amount of time for both our cars in the pit lane today is a very positive team result. We managed to get both cars ahead during the pit stops and safety car period, in what turned out to be a relatively processional race due to everyone adopting a one-stop strategy. At Monaco you can never overtake, so it was all about conserving tyres and managing the pace until the end of the race. As we saw with Sebastian, the pace was there as he set the fastest lap, but today I think second and third was probably optimum from our grid positions.”