Vitaly Petrov 12th“Today it was a very difficult race with very changeable weather conditions. When the rain returned near the end of the race I lost temperature in my tyres and this made the car’s handling very difficult. It looked like the wet conditions would continue so I changed to the intermediates, but it did not last as long as we thought. Maybe we should have changed to the super softs, but it is so difficult to predict the weather, and many other teams did the same thing. I am a little disappointed as it was possible to score points had we done the perfect strategy but it was not to be today.”
Nick Heidfeld DNF“Not a good race for me today, and it’s the second consecutive weekend without finishing, so obviously I’m very disappointed. My second pit stop was longer than expected, the car overheated and I noticed smoke coming from the rear. It worsened, and then I noticed the flames so I had to pull over at the end of the pit lane and cut my race short. The last couple of races have not been what I hoped for, but we have a few weeks now to reassess and come back stronger after the August break.”
Eric Boullier, Renault team principal“We had a disappointing race to wrap up this part of the season. Nick had some misfortune once again after a visit to the pits; his second pit stop was held up after a problem with one of the wheels, and the car is not designed to stay running on high revs for so long so it caught fire. Vitaly was on a strong strategy, doing well and then the second raindrops affected us, which meant we had to pit again and that put a stop to our chance of points. The next race is in a month’s time, and although we have the factory shutdown in that period we are focused on showing a better performance in the forthcoming Grands Prix. ”
Alan Permane, Renault chief race engineer“A bad day for us. Nick had a very poor start and struggled in the wet conditions. In his second pit stop we had a problem with one of the wheel nuts meaning that the car was sat at high revs for a long time. This meant a build-up of heat which caused a fire. Although it looked spectacular it was only a small part of bodywork which burnt on the left-hand sidepod. Vitaly was having a reasonable race. He was in a nice rhythm when we changed to the prime tyres, which should have lasted to the end of the race and given us a finish well inside the top ten. Unfortunately, the late rain shower made it very slippery on the worn prime tyres so we changed to intermediates. The weather quickly changed and it dried up, meaning we had to change back to dry tyres.”
