A tough afternoon - Fisico

The Italian ING Renault F1 Team driver, Giancarlo Fisichella, maintained his run of points-scoring finishes with finishing 8th in Bahrain yesterday afternoon. The Roman talks about his 'tough' Bahrain race.

"Well, the first thing was that I made it to the finish. That was important because I retired from this race in the last two seasons. After that, in terms of the result, the best we could have done today was 7th – and I was 8th."

"For sure. I made a good start, but couldn’t gain any positions, and I could feel that the pace was good. But I was stuck behind Kubica, who had a very heavy fuel load and was struggling with the car. That meant I couldn’t build any gap over Webber, and limited our choices for the strategy."

"I think we probably made a small mistake in how we ran the race, because I was very heavy in that stint, and the tyres just went away really quickly. I was fighting with the rear end, and I lost of time and some positions too."

"That’s right. We put the hard tyres on in the second stop, the balance was good again and I caught Jarno very quickly. I was much quicker, and I was trying hard to get past, but the conditions were difficult, very low grip, and it was hard to get close enough to try and pass. I got alongside, but couldn’t quite make it stick."

"Yes, that’s how they are for us at the moment. With only a week since Sepang, nothing had changed on the car, and we expected a similar result to what we saw in Malaysia. The conditions were difficult, and the problem in the middle stint meant we didn’t quite do the maximum yesterday. But nobody at Renault is happy to be fighting for P7, and I know the guys at the factory are pushing really hard to develop the car and improve our situation as quickly as we can."