Double finish for Virgin duo
The Spanish race got off to a clean start, and both Virgin drivers Timo Glock and Jérôme D'Ambrosio followed a 3 stop strategy, using the Hard tyres only for the last stint. They matched each other for pace throughout the race and the two cars performed reliably allowing Glock and D’Ambrosio to cross the finish line 19th and 20th.
Timo Glock: “I had a reasonable race - although it was a bit of a struggle going into turn one. Liuzzi got past me as he had a better line but I got past him after the first pitstop, which was good as it meant that we could then go at our own pace. In general I think we got the best out of the car today and we had a good strategy in terms of managing the traffic, so overall I'm quite happy with my day.”
Jérôme D’Ambrosio: “I think it was a pretty good race for me - better than qualifying yesterday. I had a pretty good first stint but of course when we hit the traffic it turns into a completely different race. Here you lose a lot of time, more than in Turkey, China or Malaysia, but for us it was a good race. We need to look at a small issue with the brakes but apart from that everything went smoothly. The team did a great job again with the strategy. I had some good stints with not too much traffic so overall I'm quite pleased.”
John Booth, Team Principal: “Timo got a particularly good start on the run down to turn one, but unfortunately Liuzzi got past on the outside. He struggled in the first stint with a set of tyres which had a small vibration issue. We picked this up after qualifying but since we needed to run all three sets of our Option tyres today, we elected to use that set in the stint which we thought would be most plagued by traffic. It looks in general that our pace was a little bit better than we thought compared to the front-runners and we also didn’t see the traffic we expected in the first stint. After stopping for a new set of Option tyres Timo made light work of getting past Liuzzi and was able to run at his true pace for the rest of the race.
“Jérôme struggled a bit with his braking stability throughout the weekend and this seems to have harmed his pace in the race relative to Timo. However, overall, he completed his objective of moving ahead of the Hispanias.
“In terms of the team performance, another strong weekend in which we have completed the first five-race cycle on the gearbox, which is a huge improvement compared to last year. Now we have our reliability issues behind us, we need to focus on performance developments for the car.”
