14/04/2007
NEWS STORY
Luca Filippi - Winner: I knew we had the potential to come here & win! We pushed really hard during the winter tests because both the team & I are pushing towards the same goal; to win the Championship. Starting from 8th tomorrow will be more difficult. We'll need a good start & the same pace as today. But I am confident we can overtake & get another podium!
Timo Glock - 2nd: I think we had a pretty good start – it wasn't too bad from P7 to P2, and I hit Xandi Negrao after the first corner because I was on the inside and he didn't leave me any room, and we crashed. After that point I thought I can't finish the race because the steering was completely to the right, and both suspensions were a little bit bent, and unfortunately I locked up the front left tyre as well on the second or third lap as we came up to first corner – I don't know what happened but there was a bit of fluid on the ground – so I locked it a little bit too hard up.
Andi Zuber - 3rd: My aim was top five in qualifying and the race, so this is even better because it's a podium. It was hard in the first two corners – I had actually a good start, but I just saw smoke in the first two corners! It was quite hard to arrive there, and my car is I think damaged, like Timo's. I was so happy when the first lap was behind me, and I just tried to keep the pace – I had too much oversteer, but other than that it was pretty good.
Bruno Senna - 4th: I'm pretty pleased. The ART's were quite far behind, and Adrian did a good job, so I'm pretty pleased with it all. Our race pace was quite competitive – still a little bit here and a little bit there, but in general it was okay. It was the first time I drove the car with 90 kilos of fuel in so I struggled in the first few laps with that – I didn't know how the car would behave, and it behaved a bit differently from how I was expecting, so I made a few mistakes which almost allowed Lucas to overtake, but he didn't have too much of an advantage over me because he was a bit too worried about me knocking into him or something.
Borja Garcia: - 8th: I'm very happy, especially because it's the first race and I made the points and because tomorrow I start in pole position. For today the car was very good, especially after we changed the tyres. I think if I do a good start tomorrow it's possible to win or at least finish well in the race.
Sergio Jimenez - 19th: I had a problem at the start with the clutch due to the heat; luckily for me so did several other drivers so the start was delayed. I was pushed to the pits and the team restarted the engine and I started the race from the pits. The car was OK on the opening laps and I made my pitstop on lap 3 but then the car began to be affected by understeer from the tenth lap. I felt I could still have a good finish but my engine problems were getting worse and with 6 laps to go the engine broke, I tried to keep it running to make the finish but two laps from the finish I had to pull off. The team will be working very hard to get my car ready for tomorrow's race.
Mike Conway - DNF: Coming round for the second start, on the pit straight I went to put it into 1st gear, and it didn't happen. I tried second gear, but there was just no drive. Obviously I'm really disappointed, but hopefully we can come through tomorrow.
Javier Villa - DNF: I was going quite well, getting closer to Borja and his teammate when my engine failed. We had already warned Mecachrome about it not sounding right and not running well and, at the end, it just went off. A shame as our strategy was to do the pit stop a bit later in the race to get some clean laps and this would have allowed us to push more. Now everything is more difficult for tomorrow as we are starting 21st and given that there isn't pitstop in the sprint race we'd have to push much as we can right from the start.