26/06/2011
NEWS STORY
Marussia Virgin Racing drivers Timo Glock and Jerome d'Ambrosio increased the team's season tally of double finishes to five today when they took the chequered flag at the European Grand Prix, held on the Valencia Street Circuit.
Timo Glock got off to a fantastic start, gaining three positions on the first lap, moving up to 18th position. Unfortunately he was unable to hold off his rivals once DRS had been enabled. Jerome D'Ambrosio also got away well, maintaining his starting position but could not make any progress until after his first pitstop when he passed Liuzzi on the second lap of the stint.
From this point on, both drivers were effectively running on their own, using a two stop strategy to good effect to get to the flag. The race was finished by all the cars on the grid, only the third time in the history of Formula One that this has happened.
Timo Glock: "Quite a positive weekend for us I think. Everything ran smoothly and I had no real problems during the three days. In the race itself I had a very good opening lap and I overtook both the Lotus cars and a Toro Rosso, although he got right back past me straight away. Once the DRS was enabled I couldn't keep Heikki and Jarno behind me and after that I just ran my own race. I was quite comfortable being able to run at a good pace although at the end we had a bit of a fuel pick-up problem and I had to save fuel. But in general I'm very happy with the weekend and I've retained my lap record here. It's a bit of a shame to have a good race and still finish 21st where you started, but with nobody having technical issues or first lap incidents, that's all you can do."
Jerome D'Ambrosio: "I'm obviously much happier with today's race than with yesterday's qualifying result. Even though I lost quite a lot of time in the first stint when I was held up by Liuzzi, I had a good second stint and all this is great experience for me. The main thing for me right now is to improve on my Saturday performance, but overall I'm happy with my weekend and to have finished another race."
John Booth, Team Principal: "Overall a pleasing result with both cars taking the flag and Jerome improving from his qualifying position yesterday by overtaking Liuzzi on track. This means that the cars finished in the correct pace order compared to our direct rivals. Looking on the positive side, we seem to have moved closer towards our nearest competitor ahead of us on the grid, however with such strong reliability throughout the field it's a little disappointing to end up 21st and 22nd. We got the strategy about right, although perhaps we should have stopped Jerome slightly earlier in the first stint as he was just falling into the second stage of tyre degradation but unfortunately we were already stopping Timo on that lap. Towards the end of the race with Timo we spotted an issue with fuel dropouts in turn 1, which meant he was having to back off. We now head back to the factory for a longer than usual period, ahead of our home race at Silverstone. We are all very excited about working in the new pits and we're hoping to keep up our current momentum for the next few races."
To check out our European Grand Prix gallery, click here.