19/04/2010
NEWS STORY
Difficult weather conditions yielded a mixed bag of results for the four Cosworth-powered teams in yesterday's rain-afflicted Chinese Grand Prix. AT&T Williams driver Rubens Barrichello was the highest placed Cosworth driver in 12th position just two seconds shy of maintaining the team's run of points-scoring finishes this season.
A 14th place finish belied a hard-fought and well-judged race from Lotus Racing's Heikki Kovalainen, who had made the most of an intelligent strategy to run as high as sixth in the early stages. Nonetheless, he finished just one lap down and ahead of the Williams-Cosworth of Nico Hülkenberg, representing another highly satisfactory result for Lotus Racing in just their fourth Grand Prix.
The rookie Hispania team also had cause for satisfaction with their second consecutive two car finish, on this occasion with Bruno Senna ahead of his team-mate Karun Chandhok. Unfortunately neither Virgin Racing driver completed the race with Lucas Di Grassi experiencing clutch problems and Timo Glock retiring as a result of a chassis-related fire that damaged the engine's AVS system.
"The Chinese Grand Prix brings to an end the opening group of 'flyaway' races for this season and we can reflect on a generally positive first four events for Cosworth," said General Manager of Cosworth's F1 Business Unit, Mark Gallagher. "Unfortunately none of our teams picked up points but there were still some noteworthy performances which were not necessarily reflected by the end positions. Along with the team we decided on Saturday morning to change Rubens Barrichello's engine, although this was purely precautionary. With a fresh engine, he then had a strong qualifying session and was only prevented from reaching Q3 by the tiniest fraction. The highlight of the race was definitely Heikki's result for Lotus and briefly running in the top six. HRT were also delighted with another two car finish while it was unfortunate that Virgin Racing endured reliability trouble. Timo's car experienced a chassis-related fire on the way to the grid which subsequently damaged the engine's AVS system and forced him out of the race on the opening lap. Overall, though, the data we have gathered during China will allow us to fine-tune the chassis-engine performance further with our teams ahead of the start of the European season."