Sunday: Schumacher breaks, Rosberg scores for Mercedes
Mercedes experienced a rather frustrating race at the Yeongam circuit. Nico Rosberg fought with the Toro Rossos to snatch a few points, while Michael Schumacher was once again forced to retire after a collision with Vitaly Petrov.
Nico Rosberg – 8th
I was quite fast at the beginning of the race today, but after we changed tire types, it became more difficult to fight because the degradation was too significant.
I had some nice battles against Jenson and the Ferraris, and I was pushing hard to defend my position against Felipe and Fernando in the second stint. Meanwhile, I noticed a flat spot on my front tire, so I had to pit earlier than planned, which made my last stint on the hard tires really too long.
I didn’t have enough grip at the end and I wasn’t able to defend the position against Jaime. A difficult race for me today but I’m still happy to score some points.
Michael Schumacher – retirement
«Another unfortunate end to a race that was rather encouraging. It’s really a shame because the car was once again well set up for the race.
It would have been interesting to see what was possible, and I think we certainly could have gained a few points.
As for the incident, I didn’t see Vitaly coming, I was just suddenly thrown in a direction I didn’t want to go, and then I saw my rear wing hanging from the car. It’s unfortunate, but these things happen when you’re battling, that’s racing.
Ross Brawn – Team Principal
The first part of the race was quite encouraging for our two drivers. We had a good pace with the soft tires. Nico was fighting with the front teams until his pit stop. We fitted both our cars with hard tires during the first stop to ensure we could execute our two-stop strategy.
Nico had a good pace, but he flat-spotted one of his tires, which forced him to pit once more. From there, he had to take care of his tires for more than half the race distance until the checkered flag. He did this very well, moving up from 14th to 7th place, but he couldn’t keep up with Alguersuari in the last lap, whose tires were ten laps fresher.
Regarding Michael’s incident, he was driving perfectly well and holding his line when someone simply forgot to brake at turn three. Although we didn’t score points to our full potential today, there were encouraging signs of our competitiveness for the last three races of the season, and we will look to build on this momentum in India, which will be a new adventure for all of us.
