Thursday 24 May 2012

GPUpdate

Petrov: It was a frustrating afternoon

13 November 2011
2011 Abu Dhabi Formula 1 Grand Prix: Sunday race results

A plethora of problems led to one of Lotus Renault GP’s toughest race days of the year at the Yas Marina Circuit on Sunday evening, with Russian Vitaly Petrov and Brazilian representative Bruno Senna both enduring troublesome afternoons.

Petrov suffered from a costly DRS issue, while Senna’s failing KERS unit and a drive-through penalty for ignoring blue flags ensured that no points were scored.

"It was quite a frustrating afternoon because my DRS was not working," said Petrov. "We thought we could have a good fight with the cars in front, but we were pretty helpless, so we decided to change the strategy.

"When I first stopped, we put fresh Medium tyres on but unfortunately these did not last long enough so we returned to the pits on lap 38 to change to the Soft.

"Unfortunately that ended up being too slow. The pace was not good enough to score points and that’s the reality."

"Let’s be honest here, there’s not a crumb of comfort to take from that performance," added Senna. "We suffered from a KERS failure, drive through penalty and a car which was not on the money at this particular track.

"Put those together and you see why I finished where I did. There was lots of lost time to make up and, strategically, we took a gamble that didn’t pay off.

"I certainly think that overall this weekend my pace was as good as it could have been. Maybe for Brazil we will have a better baseline, and let’s hope we have a better race weekend."

Related

Series
  Formula 1

Personalities
  Vitaly Petrov
  Bruno Senna

Teams
  Lotus Renault

Other
  DTM Tickets (best price guarantee!) at Sportstadium.com

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race results

Pos. DriverTeamTime
1.uk L. HamiltonMcLaren1:37:11.886
2.es F. AlonsoFerrari+8.457
3.uk J. ButtonMcLaren+25.881
4.au M. WebberRed Bull+35.784
5.br F. MassaFerrari+50.578
6.de N. RosbergMercedes+52.317
7.de M. SchumacherMercedes+1:15.964
8.de A. SutilForce India+1:17.122
9.uk P. di RestaForce India+1:41.087
10.jp K. KobayashiSauber+1 Lap
Full results

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