22/07/2012
NEWS STORY
It was a day of mixed emotions for the Marussia F1 Team at the Hockenheimring. On the one hand, Charles Pic continued the excellent form he has demonstrated throughout the weekend and drove an industrious race to reveal more of the promise from the team's recent aerodynamic upgrades. Less fortunate was Timo Glock's race long battle with balance issues on home asphalt.
The finishing positions have a certain familiarity but belie the diminishing gap in lap time to the team's immediate competitor Caterham and a clear margin to the HRT cars behind.
Charles Pic: "The start did not work well for me, so we have to understand that and learn for the next time. After that the first lap went really well, so I was able to recover well. The pace was good and although we have not changed position, we continue to improve versus the Caterhams and pull away from the HRTs. This is positive, but not sufficient, and we have to keep working away at this to find more. I am quite happy with my race and our direction. The boys in the team have had a tough weekend but responded well and I would like to thank them for that. Now on to the Hungaroring. There is not much time but we will use these next days well to study the race today and I hope make some small improvements for next weekend."
Timo Glock: "Not a great weekend for me. Even though it was my home race, quite early on it became one to put behind me and that was quite difficult I have to say. Since lap 10 the balance of the car did not feel right and it became very difficult to drive. We struggled for top speed on the straights and then towards the end of the race there was a problem with the differential and the last few laps were so tough. I couldn't do anything with the car and was dropping back quite quickly. A race I won't think about for very long."
John Booth, Team Principal: "A tough weekend on Timo's side of the garage did not improve today and it is frustrating for us that we were unable to conquer the problems for him ahead of his home race. The package generally is performing well and without the specific issues that Timo has been experiencing with his car, we know we are making good progress. Charles drove a very impressive race and the lap times show clear progress in line with our objectives for this batch of races following the introduction of the new package at Silverstone. That will provide little comfort for Timo, we know. There isn't much time before the next round in Hungary, but enough to undertake a thorough analysis of all the information available to us and work hard at resolving the problems to try to give him a better weekend there."
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