22/05/2011
NEWS STORY
Marussia Virgin Racing achieved another double finish today to add to its tally at the fifth race of the 2011 Formula One season, the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona.
The grandstands were full in honour of local hero Fernando Alonso and they were rewarded with sunshine and an air temperature of 27°C. The track had been warmed to 41°C and a major concern was to save the tyres in order to optimise the pit-stop strategy.
The race got off to a clean start, and both Timo and Jerome followed a three pitstop strategy, using the Hard Pirelli P-Zero tyres only for the last stint. They ran at a similar pace throughout the race and the two cars performed reliably, allowing Timo Glock and Jerome D'Ambrosio to cross the finish line in 19th and 20th position respectively.
Timo Glock: "I had a reasonable race - although it was a bit of a struggle going into turn one. Liuzzi got past me as he had a better line but I got past him after the first pitstop, which was good as it meant that we could then go at our own pace. In general I think we got the best out of the car today and we had a good strategy in terms of managing the traffic, so overall I'm quite happy with my day."
Jerome D'Ambrosio: "I think it was a pretty good race for me - better than qualifying yesterday. I had a pretty good first stint but of course when we hit the traffic it turns into a completely different race. Here you lose a lot of time, more than in Turkey, China or Malaysia, but for us it was a good race. We need to look at a small issue with the brakes but apart from that everything went smoothly. The team did a great job again with the strategy. I had some good stints with not too much traffic so overall I'm quite pleased."
John Booth, Team Principal: "Timo got a particularly good start on the run down to turn one, but unfortunately Liuzzi got past on the outside. He struggled in the first stint with a set of tyres which had a small vibration issue. We picked this up after qualifying but since we needed to run all three sets of our Option tyres today, we elected to use that set in the stint which we thought would be most plagued by traffic. It looks in general that our pace was a little bit better than we thought compared to the front-runners and we also didn't see the traffic we expected in the first stint. After stopping for a new set of Option tyres Timo made light work of getting past Liuzzi and was able to run at his true pace for the rest of the race.
"Jerome struggled a bit with his braking stability throughout the weekend and this seems to have harmed his pace in the race relative to Timo. However, overall, he completed his objective of moving ahead of the Hispanias.
"In terms of the team performance, another strong weekend in which we have completed the first five-race cycle on the gearbox, which is a huge improvement compared to last year. Now we have our reliability issues behind us, we need to focus on performance developments for the car."
To check out our Spanish GP gallery, click here.