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Renault driver Robert Kubica finished this afternoon’s European grand Prix in fifth place, despite a penalty imposed by the stewards for failing to stay above the minimum time when the safety car was deployed after Mark Webber’s accident.
“I got a pretty good start today and I managed to keep my position, then had a really nice clean fight with Jenson – I think we spent about half a lap side by side. In fact, we both managed to overtake Webber going into turn eight: I was on the inside, Jenson was on the outside and we both squeezed Mark to get past,” he said.
“And then, Jenson and I went through the next two corners side by side as well, so it was a pretty fun first lap and I came out on top of the battle. After that, we got lucky when the Safety Car came out: I was already braking for the last corner when the message came on the steering wheel, so I decided to head straight to the pits”
“Unfortunately, though, we didn’t manage to take maximum advantage of the opportunity: I was the first car into the pits but the third car to leave. If everything had gone smoothly, we could have finished on the podium this afternoon, but unfortunately we didn’t manage to do so.
Unfortunately, despite starting tenth, teammate Vitaly Petrov was classified fourteenth at the end of the day after loses a lot of places off the line. The young Russian rookie is disappointed that he couldn’t produce a stronger result.....
“I’m disappointed with my result today. When you start the race in tenth, the minimum you expect is to keep your position,” he said. “My problems began at the start because I got big wheel spin and lost a lot of places. After that I tried to keep up good pace and tried to attack De la Rosa, but he had very good speed on the straight it’s very difficult to overtake here so I couldn’t get by. As a rookie it’s good experience for me to finish the race and we know what we need to do for the coming races.”
“To finish fifth with Robert is a good result and we’ve made up some ground on Mercedes in the championship,” added Eric Boullier, Team Principal. “We managed to react quickly to the Safety Car and adapt the strategy, but I still feel we could have come away with a better result. It’s disappointing to see Vitaly miss out on points, especially after his good performance in qualifying. When you are in P15 after the first lap it’s very difficult to get back into the points, but at least he had pretty strong pace today.” |
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