Monaco GP - Red Bull Renault - RaceStaring ninth, Mark Webber drove a typically solid race for the Red Bull team to finish the rain-hit Monaco Grand Prix in fourth position. Those five championship points draw the Red Bull Renault team up level with Williams Toyota with
15 points.
David Coulthard's tough Monaco weekend continued as he crashed out of the race early on after starting from 15th position courtesy of a gearbox change penalty.
Mark Webber
“That was good, a great result which gives us a lot of points. It wasn’t the most exciting race in the world in terms of racing, but it was very difficult early on in the wet conditions and we were aqua-planning at Casino. It was definitely over the edge for the intermediate tyres for a few laps when it was raining hard, but then it started to dry and we had to think about changing tyres."
"It would have been good to have had a little bit more fuel as we had to change to dry tyres maybe five laps earlier than we would have liked. It wasn’t ideal, but the team did such a good job, both at the track and at the factory in Milton Keynes, it’s great to get a strong result.”
David Coulthard
“It’s was always going to be a race where you had to be very careful at the beginning. I was having difficulty with my downshifts and got caught out on the entry to Casino; I corrected, corrected and corrected, but then ran out of road.
It looked like Sebastien (Bourdais) had a similar event and then found me in an area where he was about to have his crash. I’m extremely disappointed as this is a race where keeping out of trouble gives you a good chance of getting points. But, that said, the boys did a great job to recover the car after the qualifying accident and I’m obviously very happy that they scored a fourth place with Mark.”
Christian Horner
“A great race from Mark today. He was one of the few drivers who didn’t put a wheel wrong throughout the two hour long race. Unfortunately our cross-over strategy to go onto slick tyres was about five or six laps too early, which allowed Raikkonen and Sutil, who had the benefit of going several laps longer, to just sneak ahead. But Mark kept it all together and benefited from Kimi’s accident to finish a well deserved fourth. It’s a great result for him and the team. David’s weekend got off to a bad start and finished in very much the same way. Nothing much has gone right for him this weekend, but I’m sure he’ll bounce back in Canada.”
Fabrice Lom, Renault Principal Engineer
“We are very happy with this result, it’s very good for the team. It’s a shame for David, but it was so difficult to stay on the track at the start. Engine-wise, it’s difficult on this track and with the new regulations to keep the power down, so it’s more a question of keeping the power down than having the power here. I think we showed that the drivability of the Renault engine is not so bad, we are there.”
Red Bull
