Sebastien Buemi was left ruing a late error which gifted seventh position on track to the Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi.
The young swiss driver had managed to take full advantage of the early safety car period to pit for tyres and may well have finished as high as sixth if he had not made an error which let Adrian Sutil’s Force India through – allowing him to be left in the clutches of Kobayashi’s late charge.
However, following the post-race stewards enquiry Buemi was judged to have failed to stay above the minimum time set by the FIA ECU when the Safety Car was deployed and thus had an additional five seconds added to his time – demoting him to ninth behind Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari.
Team-mate Jaime Alguersuari actually benefited from the stewards’ decision, but not enough to break into the points.
Sebastien Buemi – (Finished 8thbut was demoted to ninth after receiving 5 second penalty):This was not a very good race as I could have finished sixth, but I made two mistakes, which have cost us four points. I am happy to be in the points, but disappointed to have missed out on the opportunity to do better. As for losing seventh place, I knew Kobayashiwas closing very quickly on new tyres, and on the penultimate lap I was blocking my front tyres a lot. But at the final corner, I did not think he could brake that late and so I am unhappy that I made the mistake and let him pass. The team did a good job of the pit stop, at just the right moment during the Safety Car period. But we are under investigation along with many other cars about this point of the race. I found it very hard to slow down, as required by the rules, because the Safety Car arrived very late as we approached the start finish line. Let’s wait and see what the stewards will say.
Jaime Alguersuari – (Finished 15th on track but promoted to 13th after later penalties): To be honest, I am not really disappointed, because at least the team got points again with Sebastien, so congratulations to him. This weekend I never had a hundred percent control of the car, never having quite the right feeling with the brakes and that was my main issue. The situation improved slightly during the race, but I never felt the car was mine to do as I wanted. I have to tell myself that better times will come, just like I had earlier in the season. There are still a lot of races to go and once I get back the feeling for the car and its handling, I am sure I can score points again.
Franz Tost:We have often said we need to improve our qualifying performance if we want to score points on a regular basis and yesterday, Buemi did exactly that to start from eleventhon the grid. Today he got the benefit of that and picked up another eighth place to follow on from the same finishing position in Canada two weeks ago. For a long time, he ran in sixth position which was also down to an excellent strategy from the team, in terms of managing the pit stop during the Safety Car period. However, Buemi is one of nine drivers under investigation by the stewards regarding a possible infringement during that Safety Car time, so we need to wait and see. Unfortunately, at the very last corner of the race, he lost seventh place to Kobayashi who was running on a very new set of Soft tyres. But we have scored points again, so well done to the team.
