News: 'Massive moments' for Kovy

In the conditions which made so many good drivers make some uncharacteristical driving mistakes Heikki Kovalainen did the only thing which was right. He kept his temper low, his spirits high, stayed out of trouble and just concentrated on his driving. The result – finally seeing the well deserved checkered flag, a 5th place on the finish and four points to his name!

 

Oh, and maybe a small matter of satisfaction that he finished the race ahead of his team mate Lewis Hamilton, who started this race 5 places ahead of him.

 

“It was good to finish the race – that was the target today“, said Heikki. Actually the team had chosen the 1-stop-strategy for him because there was no chance for them to compete with the Red Bulls or Brawns. But with the wet weather race this strategy turned out to be perfect. „Our strategy was spot on: finishing higher than fifth was not possible today and I’m very pleased to have scored four solid points without making a single mistake – despite some massive moments!” Those „moments“ were not onlly the very tricky driving conditions but also a few incidents like the incident between Heidfeld and Trulli on lap 13, when Heikki was lucky to escape and not get involved in their accident.

 

Towards the end of the race Kovy's pace clearly got faster. With a little help from his team mate Lewis Hamilton Heikki claimed P5 when Lewis ran wide in Turn 10. The Finn slipped through and set out to hunt down Rubens Barrichello. He almost caught him but it was not worth a risk to launch a real attack for P4. „Our pace was good and, during the last laps of the race, I could get close to Rubens – just not enough to start an attack“, said Heikki. Also he had no complaints about his tyres. “The tyres worked quite okay, the car worked pretty well and little by little we were able to move towards the front,” the 27-year old was quoted on ITV. „So it was a pretty good end to the weekend, managing to score a few points in these difficult conditions.“

 

McLaren boss Martin Withmarsh was for once delighted with Heikki's race. “Heikki scored a very well deserved four points for an impressive fifth place. It isn’t at all easy to drive a faultless race in conditions like those we faced today, but Heikki did just that.“

 

(c) Jule Krause