Sunday: Petrov finishes ahead of Kovalainen

Vitaly Petrov – 16th

I am really very happy with my performance today. We didn’t show the true potential of the car during qualifying, but today I managed to do similar lap times to the cars ahead of us and didn’t make any mistakes in these difficult conditions. The car was good all afternoon and the team worked very well to allow me to extract the maximum, both on the pit wall and during the stops, so I am delighted to have been able to finish my first race for the team and to start showing what I’m capable of in a race. It gives us a good foundation to work from, so it was a good Sunday, in front of our fans no less.

Heikki Kovalainen – 18th

It was one of those races where you can achieve a very good result, but with a bit of bad luck and a car that wasn’t completely well balanced, in the end, I’m just glad I made it to the finish line. I made a small mistake with the intermediates and had to pit again to change the front wing, which made me lose a few positions and ended my race. Despite that, it’s good to have both cars at the finish and we showed that we have a car capable of fighting on Sunday in the race. Now we need to focus on doing better in qualifying and attacking in the next race in China.

Mark Smith – Technical Director

From a technical standpoint, it was an incredibly intense race. With changing conditions throughout the race, we had to make a number of decisions to give us a chance to fight, and while it paid off for Vitaly, Heikki had a more complicated afternoon. He had to change his front wing after going off track, which put an end to his chances in the race, but it’s good to see how well Vitaly was able to attack and to see that he was achieving good times with the intermediates.