07/10/2007
NEWS STORY
David Coulthard: A frustrating race. To start fifth and finish eighth is pretty disappointing, but at least we take a point from China and move closer to Williams in the battle for fourth in the Championship. It was a bit of a lottery with the tyres today and unfortunately at the point I changed to dry tyres it started to rain lightly costing me around 30 seconds in two laps.
Mark Webber: I had massive under steer on my wet tyres in the first stint, which made it very difficult to get through Turn one and twelve – important corners for lap time. I made the call to go to dry tyres, which was about the right time for my pit stop. It was a tough call to know if wet or dry tyres were best. Once on the dry tyres, the rain started again and I saw a car off the track on the last corner and also had a moment myself. I made the call to put wets back on, which wasn't good, as the rain didn't last for long, so I had to go back onto dry tyres again. Unfortunately, we didn't quite get it right today. David's point has closed us up to Williams a little bit, so let's see what we can do in Brazil.
Christian Horner: Changeable conditions at the beginning of the race meant it was a bit hit and miss regarding the drivers being on the right tyres at the right time. David was running in fifth position behind the leading group at the start and remained on his wet tyres at his first pit stop. It then looked as though dry tyres were the ones to be on, so we opted to change him to those and fuel him to the end of the race. At the point when he left the pit lane for a second time, another small shower broke out which lost him crucial circuit time. Those not on dry tyres benefited significantly at that point. Mark was the opposite. He had some issues with the car that he wasn't particularly happy with in the damp conditions on his wet tyres so changed to dry tyres very early on. It looked like the right decision at the time. When the rain started again, he changed back to wets and was the fastest car on the track for a few laps until finally needing to pit for dry tyres. Unfortunately, he finished out of the points. It's frustrating for both cars to have started in a competitive position and obviously disappointing to only get one point out of it. Congratulations to Toro Rosso today on fourth and sixth place.
Fabrice Lom, Renault Principal Engineer, Track Support: We are a little disappointed with our result today. We had a good car, but in these changing conditions you need to have the right tyres at the right time and it was really close once again, with less than 15 seconds separating fifth and tenth positions at the finish, which is nothing in such a race. We'd like to congratulate Toro Rosso for the results achieved today, it's a shame we were not able to make it too. However our result doesn't change the fact that our car performed well this weekend. Engines ran very well and were trouble free during these two Asian races. We score one point, it could have been more which is a little bit frustrating, but it is still one point.
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