Mark’s weekend began with a post-mortem on his run to fourth in Sepang four days earlier. Had it been a good race or a bad one? Mark pulled out his big bag of metaphors.…
“It’s got two sides to it. We had a really smooth weekend in the build up – but we know how important race starts are, and how they can put you on the back foot very, very quickly. You just have to keep swinging, keep doing what you can. It was nice to finish on a positive note with a recovery drive. So yeah, there were two sets of emotions coming out of Malaysia. The encouraging thing was I wasn’t too slow – even with the 15-18 seconds I lost doing the grand prix without the Kers – but I’ve been around the block enough to know that’s water under the bridge now. You just go on. Also, as a team we know how to dust ourselves down after a tough weekend. We come here and focus on tomorrow.”
As a postscript, while the reaction to the new rules has generally been positive, Mark remains to be convinced.
“As a category Formula One has changed a lot in terms of the pace this year. I still think most of the time we can push ourselves to a pretty high level, getting the most out of the car and not leaving a huge amount in reserve, but there certainly is an element of endurance mentality associated with that now.
“We have to get that balance right. It’s probably a better question for the guys that are scoring points towards the back of the top ten. How are they going about doing that on a two-stop? I think we should always make sure people getting World Championship points should never be doing competitive laps close to the lap time of a GP2 car. Formula One needs to always be the absolute pinnacle by a long way. People like to watch cars being driven on the limit.”
While Sebastian was top of the timesheets by a comfortable margin in both Friday sessions, Mark was right behind him in the morning, but trailing down in tenth on Friday afternoon after a few niggles with tyres and Kers.
“It’s been a pretty good day but maybe not the best FP2. We didn’t get a good lap on the new tyres, which is why we’re back down on the overall time sheet – but the option long run was good. We’ll have a look at Kers and whether we run it is up to the guys. We’d like to run it, of course, but it’s a subject to be discussed.”
Saturday came, and Mark had a day to forget. Car trouble restricted him to one flyer in FP3, but also led to a feverish attempt to fix the car in time for Qualifying. Mark got out on track in time to have two runs in Q1 – but he didn’t make the cut and finished the session 18th; his worst return since Japan 2009.
“It’s a very frustrating day. I did one lap in FP3 and trying to get into things in Q1… yeah, we just weren’t quick enough at the end of the day. We have a few plates spinning in the background and we paid the ultimate price today for that.”
Many people wanted to know why Mark hadn’t run on the quicker Option tyres, and whose decision that had been.
“We thought we had enough pace to do the lap, but in the end I couldn’t get the tyre working. We weren’t quick enough. For sure the Option is safer, but that’s the way it goes, we should have had enough pace for the Prime. The pitwall has most of the say in that, but I was comfortable with the decision to go with the Prime. I thought we had enough to get through.”
Race day in Shanghai, and Mark swum against the flow and started on the Prime tyre. It meant his first stint was sluggish, and he failed to make ground.
“We decided to start on the Prime, the hard tyre, in the first stint. We knew it was not the most desired tyre for everyone in the field as it doesn’t really have the characteristics of a hard tyre in terms of duration but we decided to get it out of the way. That was quite tricky. It wasn’t easy to come back through those guys at the back and I had a mistake in turn two on my in-lap, the tyres basically did not have much left of them, but I got the car back.”
But once he got on to the softer rubber, and the fuel load started to come down, Mark started to make serious progress.
“We really started from there. When you still see P17 on your board after 15 laps, or whatever it was, you think ‘how is this going to come?’ But then all of a sudden I just felt comfortable with the car. I had a few sets of tyres left from after qualifying so that helped a bit. Maybe that is the best way to do it all the time, not even take part in qualifying and just go from there!”
Mark’s final stint, beginning on lap 41 got off to a good start with a 1:38.993, which proved to be the fastest lap of the race. He then set about moving up the order, passing Alonso, Massa, Rosberg and Button. Mark finished third, 7.5s behind Lewis Hamilton and 2.3s behind Sebastian. It was the drive of the day, probably the drive of this very exciting season so far.
“I had a good feeling from the middle part of the race, that things were starting to come to us. It’s easy to sit here and say it was phenomenal – but in the end that’s my job, isn’t it? You have to be head down, arse up and get into it – and that’s what I did. I could have used a few more yellow flags, a few more retirements and maybe a couple of Vodafone cars pulling over, but there was nothing – I had to pass everyone, so I think I earned it today.
“I think the guys did an incredible job. Back-to-back races for us and it is clear we have not had the smoothest run with my car, but they haven’t given up and that was a drive for them today and everyone back at the Factory. It was good day for the racing and good day for us in terms of points for the team. We’re still going OK in the Constructors’ Championship, so let’s regroup, get to Turkey and work hard on it.”
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