Sunday: The Marussia team did not finish where they wanted to
The Marussia drivers leave somewhat disappointed from the 2012 Italian Grand Prix. Starting with a one-stop strategy, Charles Pic was forced to switch to two stops due to the excessive degradation of his front tires and finished in 16th place. Involved in a collision with Petrov early in the race, Timo Glock had to pit early to change his front wing, which also disrupted his race strategy.
Charles Pic – 16th:
« I am very happy with our performance in the race today, as it represents another significant step forward for the team. We came here expecting a difficult weekend [because] our car had not performed very well in Montreal, which has similar aerodynamic characteristics.
We thoroughly explored our setup options to arrive at a car that was actually very strong and today placed us even closer to the cars ahead of us, while we might not have expected to compete with them. It’s a good sign.
In the race, it wasn’t a bad start, but not great, so there’s some work to do in the latter part of the season to improve that as well as our prospects for the race. We hope to have some improvements for Singapore and hopefully they will translate into further progress.
Timo Glock – 17th:
On my side, it’s really a shame, really. The start itself wasn’t great, although I made it to turn 1 without a problem, but in turn 2, there was a lineup in front of us and Petrov went to the outside, where I was. I couldn’t avoid him and he hit my front wing, which got damaged as a result. From there, I couldn’t do much more since we lost a bit of performance and the car was just ‘OK’ to drive.
The worst part is that since I stopped so early, my stops were staggered. I had to stay on track longer and suffered more degradation at the end since the stints were rather long for me. And then the blue flags cost us at the end.
Overall, I think we should be rather satisfied since we weren’t really running with a traditional downforce specification for Monza. I’m now looking forward to Singapore – my favorite race.
