13/05/2012
NEWS STORY
This weekend has confirmed that the performance is in the package, but the package did not quite perform for the Marussia F1 Team in today's Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya.
Timo Glock finished in 18th place after a long battle of a race, in which he struggled to get the most from the car due to further balance issues that will require more detailed investigation. Charles Pic retired on lap 26 with a drive shaft failure, which accounted for his brush with the blue flags earlier in the lap.
Charles Pic: "I didn't get a very good start today. From then on I was working well on my pace and got the right side of the HRTs again. Things were going well for me then on lap 26 I suddenly lost drive and came back into the pits, where unfortunately I had to retire. We could see then that we have experienced a problem with the drive shaft, so we need to understand why that happened. There's a lot of work for all of us in the next two weeks to improve for Monaco as we have not had the weekend we hoped for. After going to Sir Frank's 70th birthday event last night I am pleased for him that he had this result today for Pastor and his team. For our side we look ahead to the next race and some more progress."
Timo Glock: "I had a pretty good start. The first lap was good and I had a bit of a fight with Lewis for that lap. In general after that when positions were settled I just tried to keep the tyres alive as long as possible and we struggled with rear end instability again. From my side I can only push around 80% at the moment. It's still not perfect and we're missing pace, so we have to analyse and get on top of the problem before Monaco. On a lighter note, congratulations to Pastor Maldonado and the Williams F1 Team. They've done a great race result today."
John Booth, Team Principal: "It is obviously very disappointing that we were unable to bring both cars home today. We have suffered two drive shaft issues this weekend - one of those was in the race - so we're sorry for Charles to suffer a DNF after his efforts all weekend. With Timo's car we have not made the progress with the car balance that we wanted to and this is preventing him from being as quick as he can be. There have been times when we have got on top of the problem and we are good, and times when we are not quite getting what we need to out of the car, as was the case in today's race. A disappointing result for us but a brilliant win for Pastor and our congratulations to the Williams F1 Team on that. A busy week ahead for us now, but we look forward to the next race in Monaco."
Check out our Grand Prix gallery, here.