Victorious Red Bull Racing driver Sebastian Vettel insisted that the most important part of the European GP was the fact that his team mate escaped uninjured from his high-speed crash, rather than Vettel's own win.
The German driver had a relatively trouble-free drive to the win after starting from pole position and surviving some minor contact with Lewis Hamilton into turn one, but he insisted that the big story was that Mark Webber was unhurt after his dramatic airborne crash.
"Most important today is the fact that Mark had quite a big shunt and the fact he is fine," Vettel muttered after the race, "It shows the cars are safer and safer but shows there is still a risk."
He added that: "Seeing the pictures, the most important fact is that Mark is fine. For some people they miss the attraction and they say this time in F1 compared to 30 years back is boring and nothing happens, but on days like this you get reminded that the speeds are high and when things go wrong they can go spectacularly wrong."
Meanwhile, on the subject of the contact with Hamilton, he added: "Braking for Turn 1 I had no reason to do anything stupid, I saw Lewis was quite late on the brakes, tried to give as much room as I could.
"Once you set your brakinng point you can't relax, it was getting quite close, there wasn't much I could do to go further on the left.
"I thought we touched, I felt the hit but couple of corners I felt there was nothing wrong with the car. I thought he hit the inside kerb a bit and maybe got a jump. It was closer than I expected, closer than I wanted, but after that I was very happy with the car, able to pull away, and managed a very good gap at the time."
Second placed Hamilton, meanwhile, said that he was delighted to have kept hold of his championship lead with second place, despite having to serve a drive-through penalty for overtaking the safety car.
"I think it is just very, very positive to be leading the world championships," Hamilton grinned, "Both myself and Jenson we have been working so hard all year and the results show the effort that everyone is putting in.
"It's great getting the results we deserve. Hopefully we can close the gap on Red Bull and hopefully really challenge them."
On the subject of his safety car faux pas, he said: "I don't really know [what happened]. As I was coming around Turn 1 I saw the safety car line. I saw the safety car was alongside me and I thought I had passed it so I continued and that was it."
Third-placed Jenson Button added that he was happy to be heading to his home race just behind his team mate in the standings.
"It is amazing for our team and us, two Brits heading into Silverstone first and second in the championship," Button smiled, "We couldn't ask for anything else.
"We also head into that race with an update for the car, we didn't have anything here and we came away with a reasonably good result, it is all positive."
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