08/07/2012
NEWS STORY
The Marussia F1 Team drivers Timo Glock and Charles Pic delivered a strong two-car finish at Silverstone today in the team's home race, the British Grand Prix. Timo ended the race in P18 and Charles in P19, ahead of the HRT cars.
The team's objective was to unlock the potential of the package to close the gap to Caterham, whilst achieving plenty of data with which to fuel the development cycle for the races ahead. From that perspective, today's result provided a positive conclusion to a challenging weekend for the team.
Timo Glock: "In general a tough week for us. It was difficult for everyone in the team to get into the weekend, but we had to do our job here, and as professionally as possible, and that is what we have done, so I think everyone can feel very proud of that. The running started out a little chaotic with the weather conditions being so up and down and our qualifying result was disappointing because we could have been in Q2. Then, having prepared for a wet race, it ended up being a completely dry race, so it has been a very changeable and, at times, frustrating weekend. I think we can be pleased with a solid P18 and with two cars home we can learn some important things about our package. It felt good from the first lap, so as we understand it more I hope we can improve it. Next, we will see what we can do in Hockenheim where, it goes without saying, I am hoping we can have a strong race in front of my home crowd to thank them for their unrelenting support."
Charles Pic: "We can be happy to have both cars finish the race and this gives us plenty of information to work with to develop our new package. We lost some time on the first set of tyres as we were faster than the HRTs, but we were stuck behind them and couldn't get past. We pitted early for our first stop and this worked well and enabled us to show good pace after this. Thanks to the crew who did a good job with the second stop and this allowed us to jump De La Rosa. I think, all things considered, we have done a solid job here this weekend and can look forward to Germany with a little more optimism."
John Booth, Team Principal: "We came into race day having experienced a fairly frustrating qualifying session when we felt a bit short-changed by our result. We are chipping away at the gap to Caterham and the midfield pack ahead, but we are not yet in a position to get to Q2 on merit and so we need to be quick to seize every opportunity that comes our way. Opportunity knocked yesterday, but at the last minute the weather worked against us. Today, both Timo and Charles drove a very solid race to bring both cars home and the team performed with the highest degree of professionalism. We have finished in our usual position in the pecking order, but the underlying result is that we have clearly moved away from HRT and closer to Caterham. The strategy for Timo worked particularly well and with Charles we worked well to adjust his strategy in order to make it work. The pit crew executed four good pit stops to ensure we could make the engineering calls stick.
"It has been a tough weekend for everyone in the team, but we can be pleased with the job we have done here at Silverstone and also encouraged by the positive signs we are seeing with Maria."
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