Heikki Kovalainen was pleased with his efforts in the 2010 Australian Grand Prix, after bringing his Lotus home in thireenth.
The Finn was the highest placed driver of all the new teams, and drove a conservative race to make the finish.
However it was a disaster for team-mate Jarno Trulli who did not start the race after suffering a hydraulic failure on his way to the grid.
Heikki Kovalainen – 13th: I enjoyed it today, I had good fun out there. Our target was to finish the race and from the start we were quite comfortably ahead of the new teams. When Glock dropped I just focused on keeping up a decent rhythm, not making any mistakes and bringing the car home. It’s difficult to say whether a different strategy would have worked better – if we’d stopped once more and put a fresh set of tyres on, that might have been better way to go, but our target was to finish the race and we achieved that again. Now we go to Malaysia with a good feeling and we’re all looking forward to that.
Jarno Trulli – DNF: Unfortunately we couldn’t start the race today because we had a hydraulic failure on the grid and, despite the team’s best efforts, we couldn’t fix it in time to make the race. We’ll work now to fix that for Malaysia and I’m looking forward to getting out there and seeing what we can do in Sepang.
Mike Gascoyne: Obviously a very disappointing start. Jarno had a hydraulic power pack fail on the grid, not something we’ve seen before and we couldn’t get it changed in time. Balancing that was another strong race from Heikki who did really well staying out on the option tyre. He made a good start but lost a few places after the accident on the opening lap, but he did a great job to get the car home, keeping us tenth in the championship. And congratulations to Karun Chandhok for getting a finish!
Tony Fernandes: I guess we’ve got to have had some bad luck at some point and unfortunately it was today. I’m disappointed for Jarno, but Heikki did us proud – three places away from a point, and he was keeping pace with most of the other cars throughout the race. Maybe it would have been nice if three other cars had gone out so we could get a point, but, joking aside, it is good that at this stage of the season we’re already thinking about points. We’re in a nice position for Malaysia. We’re looking forward to going home, and really looking forward to giving our fans something to shout about.
