Катерам за неделя
Хейки Ковалайнен:
That was obviously a great race for the team and I'm delighted we've got tenth place back and recorded our highest finish of the season. Despite that I think we could have had even more, but the rain came at just the wrong moment for us. If it had been fully wet and everyone had pitted we'd have been able to keep 12th, possibly even made up more in the stops, but when the light rain started falling my brake temperatures dropped and I wasn't quite able to keep up the pace I'd had throughout the race up to that point.
However - this is a really good day for the team, and it's great to get back to the garage and see everyone in such good spirits. This type of track was always going to give us the chance to fight, I'd said that before the race, and it was really good fighting with Jenson for as long as I did, keeping him behind me and really pushing. We have more to come from this car throughout the season, so I think we have more races like this to look forward to, and results like today make all the hard work the whole team put in worth it.
Витали Петров: I made a good start and passed a few cars but then a Sauber came right across me and hit me as we were going into turn 1. I could immediately feel a problem with the front wing so we gave it a couple of laps to see how bad the damage was but then had to pit for a new nose on lap 3. From that point I was pushing as hard as I could but then I had a low battery warning light on the dash and from that point my race was pretty much over. My engineer told me to box on lap 16 with an electrical failure and that was the end of the race. It's a real shame as I was in a strong position after my good start and as the car has felt good all weekend I would have been in with a chance of finishing really well, but these things happen in motor racing.
Марк Смит: A very exciting race and one where we showed how we are progressing. It was obviously unfortunate to see Vitaly having to retire early, had he not been hit by the Sauber he would likely have been right up there with his team mate and we had opted to start the cars on different compounds so we would have had more strategy options open to us if he had not had the electrical failure that ended his race.
With Heikki we started him on the supersofts and kept him out for a long first stint as he was managing his tyres well. He was having a fantastic battle with Jenson and keeping him at bay, and the pitcrew did a very good job indeed to keep him ahead of the McLaren after the stops. When the rain started falling we saw Heikki's brake temperatures starting to drop and he was telling us the car was harder to control, but had Perez not hit him and caused his front wing failure I am sure he would have retained that place - he was clearly in a very determined mood and driving to the level everyone knows he can. I am delighted for him and the whole team - this has been a strong weekend for us and one that gives us even more impetus to keep challenging as we head to Canada and the rest of the season.
03/12/2024 от Огнян Тенчев (drJeckyll), няма коментари