Force India, Williams, Renault, Toro Rosso

Force India, Williams, Renault, Toro Rosso

It was a good day for Force India while Williams, Renault and Toro Rosso also won't be too disappointed.

Force India:
Tonio Liuzzi: "At least we finished. After the incident in the first corner it was the maximum we could do. We had a good race in the end, learning a lot about the tyres and how the car behaves at the end of a race, but the incident pretty much destroyed my hopes of getting any points. I don't really know what happened in that corner - I was driving and then there was a big cloud of smoke so I was blind going into it. I touched someone and spun and that was it. It's a shame but we will keep pushing for the next race."

Adrian Sutil: "I'm really pleased. We achieved our target and scored some points, which is a great result for myself and for the team. It was a difficult race as with this amount of fuel and the tyres, plus the heat, we had a bit to control but overall I think we can be pretty happy about how we handled it and to be in the points is magic. All the top teams finished ahead of us and there were no failures or reliability issues so it was the maximum we could have achieved. I'm now looking forward to Australia where we will get some more updates and it could put us in an even better position for the next race. Overall a great result for the team."

Williams:
Rubens Barrichello: "It's good to have a point, but in all honesty, we thought that we would do a little better when we arrived here. So it's really all down to us, we can see that the competition is pretty fierce and there were no retirements among the leading cars. I think we finished around about where we deserved so it will be up to us to close up the gap."

Nico Hulkenberg: "It was a tough and difficult debut for me today. Right from the start, I had to take some evasive action to avoid a crash in turn 2, which dropped me couple of places and a few laps later, I spun at turn 6. I am still not really sure how it happened, initially I thought there was something broken on the car, but it was not the case. I jumped the kerbs and maybe hurt the car a bit, as it was quite difficult to drive for the rest of what was a long and lonely afternoon for me. It's been a tough weekend, but the practice and long run pace has been good and we need to build on that."

Renault
Robert Kubica: "All our hard work this weekend was undone by the incident on the first lap. During the lap to the grid, we had high engine oil levels and we took some out on the grid, but it seemed like Webber had the same problem after turn one: his engine just sucked the oil in and there was a massive amount of smoke in front of me. I think Sutil just didn't lift off because he couldn't see anything and he hit me. I spun during the incident and that cooked the rear tyres: they were overheating from that point onwards and I eventually stopped very early on lap 12. I completed the rest of the race on hard tyres, and that was a big challenge: I just set myself the goal of finishing in the points, but we didn't quite make it. Without the incident on lap one, I think we would have had a very strong points finish because we showed the pace to fight well. Overall, it was a positive weekend for us, though: we were well prepared after the winter; the team did a fantastic job at the track and back in Enstone to get the cars ready with the new package, and we didn't have any issues with the engine or the brakes. Now, we need to keep working and keep pushing."

Vitaly Petrov: "I made a fantastic start and was running well in P11 at the end of the first lap. The car felt good, and my pace was better than Barrichello in front of me. Then I ran wide over a kerb in turn 12 and it seemed to damage the right-front suspension at that point. I came into the pits to have the car checked over, and that was when we realised that the suspension couldn't be repaired so I had to retire. It was an extremely disappointing end after such a great start, but I'm pleased with how things went up to that point, and I want to thank all my mechanics and the whole team for the car they gave me this weekend. They did a fantastic job."

Toro Rosso:
Jaime Alguersuari: "It was positive that I managed to finish the first race of the season, also the first with the new no fuelling regulations. There is still a lot of room to improve, especially for me and also for the team as we should be in a position to challenge for points, being somewhere around seventh to eleventh in the races. We will need to work hard to achieve that. In terms of my physical condition, I feel that I am in much better shape than last year, when I had very little time to train, so that most of my races were just taxi drives. This track was not the best for us and now we must analyse all the data and see how to improve. One thing is certain, we need to qualify better."

Sebastien Buemi: "I'm not sure what happened at the start, but I got a lot of wheelspin, so I did not get away well and everyone passed me. After that, the first lap was quite hectic and I got a couple of places back. We decided to stay on a one stop strategy and for a while it was going well and I closed on De La Rosa, but those who took on new tyres before me were faster and so they got past me. By the time I pitted, I had lost too many places. After changing tyres, I got stuck behind Jaime and was unable to pass him and with three laps to go, the car just stopped. Tough love!"


Powered by Disqus
  • Join us on Facebook Join us on Facebook


standard
 

  • ESPN is a trademark of ESPN, Inc and STAR is a trademark of Star Television Productions Limited. Trademarks used under license by ESPN STAR Sports.
  • Presented by ESPN, Star Sports, Star Cricket