Rubens Barrichello, 15th: I lost my nose going into the first corner at the start so I had to come in for an unscheduled pitstop. That ruined my race from the outset because I came out of the pits so far behind. After that, we had to change our strategy to a one stop to avoid losing more time. We dragged it back a little bit, but not enough to score points. It’s a shame because our times were strong and tyre degradation was ok so we could have done better.
Pastor Maldonado, DNF: We had a problem with the gearbox today, but we don’t know the exact cause yet so we need to have a look into it. My pace was looking good before that and the tyres were working well. Just bad luck. We need to look forward to the last two races now.
Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer: At the start, Rubens clipped the rear of Pastor’s car while trying to defend his line to Kobayashi. Rubens damaged his front wing and pitted, changing from the soft to the hard tyre. His pace was strong throughout, on both the prime set and final soft tyres, showing a definite performance improvement over previous Grands Prix. Pastor drove a strong race too but stopped early with a gearbox problem, the cause of which is yet to be identified.
