The feared reliability woes heading into the Australian Grand Prix meant, in theory at least, that the door was open for the Marussia and Caterham teams to finally score their first World Championship points.
Problem was, of the seven cars that failed to reach the checkered flag, two of the four cars from the tail-ender teams were included, and one made it home too many laps down. But not all was lost after an at-times promising weekend.
Kamui Kobayashi made it into Q2 for Caterham although his race quickly went awry when he contacted Felipe Massa’s Williams at Turn 1 on the opening lap.
Through the first couple laps, rookie teammate Marcus Ericsson actually ran ahead of four-time defending World Champion Sebastian Vettel in his Red Bull before Vettel retired. Ericsson completed a nice pass of Adrian Sutil’s Sauber and had his first successful live pit stops before retiring at the halfway mark due to an oil pressure issue.
“We still showed a bit of the potential we have in the first laps of the first stint when I passed Sutil and was running well in 12th,” said the Swede. “My first ever live pit stop a Grand Prix went really well but then unfortunately an oil pressure problem forced us to stop – we don’t know what caused that yet but if we hadn’t had that I think we’d have finished ahead of the Marussias as I was pretty comfortable ahead of (Max) Chilton until the issue.”
And to the Marussias, considering their at-time rocky preseason, two finishes was almost something of a surprise. Chilton wound up best on the road in 13th after qualifying 17th, and ahead of teammate Jules Bianchi on Saturday for only the second time in his career. Chilton, too, was ahead of Vettel at one stage.
Bianchi’s weekend was tough as his car stalled on the grid for an aborted start, and he’d need to start with his teammate on pit lane. Despite missing the first six laps, he resumed and made it to the flag, albeit an unclassified 14th.
“The problem at the start was really quite worrying and I did not expect to be able to race, but the team got me to the garage and fought hard to get me back on track,” said Bianchi, who many regard as a star-in-waiting.
“I was six laps down when I did rejoin and of course I was never going to recover from that, but that was not the point. Being in the race – and finishing it – enabled us to gather the maximum amount of information and test various strategies for maximizing the power unit.”
Added team principal John Booth, “It was a heart-stopping start to our race, to say the least, but the way we recovered from the issues we experienced with both cars was very pleasing and ultimately we achieved our objective of a two-car finish.”
The teams head to Malaysia next, where a year ago Bianchi’s 13th place finish proved the result that netted Marussia the 10th place spot in the Constructor’s Championship ahead of Caterham.
