16/10/2011
NEWS STORY
Marussia Virgin Racing drivers Timo Glock and Jerome D'Ambrosio finished 18th and 20th respectively in the Korean Grand Prix today.
It was a bright and sunny start to the day but the sun was slowly usurped by some clouds as well as spots of rain just before the start of the race. Both Timo and Jerome had a good start and were running in 20th and 23rd position respectively during the initial laps.
The Safety Car was deployed on lap 16 as there was debris on track after Vitaly Petrov had a coming together with Michael Schumacher. Timo and Jerome completed their first pit-stop on that same lap and went back out on another set of Pirelli P-Zero Soft tyres. The race restarted on lap 20, with Timo in 18th position and Jerome, 21st.
On lap 38 Jerome pitted again and joined the track with a set of Supersoft tyres fitted. Timo followed him in only three laps later and also went out again on Supersoft tyres, running all the way to the end of the race.
Timo Glock: "It has been a good weekend for us. Strategy-wise I think we made the right choice. I had a very good car the whole race - very consistent to push until the last lap and all the problems that we thought we had before were less of an issue. The Pirellis were very good and very consistent. I had a lot of fun and could push until the end, until the last lap. We had a bit of a fight with HRT in the middle of the race, who were suddenly very quick, and I had to push more and more. Overall I'm happy and got the maximum out of the car. The pitstops were good so we made a big step forward in that area too. Now we're off to our big adventure in India, which I think the whole team is looking forward to."
Jerome D'Ambrosio: "It wasn't a great race today, but I can say that compared to yesterday and bearing in mind that we couldn't do any big changes on the car because of the rules, I think that today went pretty well. We tried to do what we could to compensate with the tools that we had and we went in the right direction. So in general it was good, definitely much better than yesterday."
John Booth, Team Principal: "A positive race on both sides of the garage today, to slightly varying degrees. Timo drove a hard race all the way to the end and we were managing the gap to Ricciardo behind him. With Jerome it is disappointing that we finished behind the HRT, however we must take the positive that the performance today far exceeded that in qualifying. He had a hard battle with Ricciardo, overtaking him after the Safety Car, but only to lose out whilst battling with Kobayashi. On the back of a disappointing weekend last week, everyone in the team stepped up their game for this weekend. The strategy was improved, the pitstops were slick and all this has been borne out of a great deal of introspection and redoubling of effort for the last few races. We'll be back in the UK this week preparing for the inaugural Indian Grand Prix and the whole team - from the engineers to logistics - are looking forward to the challenge of this voyage into the unknown."
Check out our Korean GP gallery, here.