• British Grand Prix

Grosjean happy to salvage sixth

ESPN Staff
July 8, 2012 « Rain would have helped Mercedes - Schumacher | McLaren form won't affect Hamilton talks - Whitmarsh »
Romain Grosjean finished sixth after a good passing move on Lewis Hamilton © Sutton Images
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Romain Grosjean said his team salvaged his race at the British Grand Prix by putting him out for two long stints on the hard tyres after he had to make an early pit stop for repairs.

Grosjean had to pit for a new front wing on lap two after a first corner collision, but still managed to finish sixth. After starting on softs he was able to spend the rest of the race on hard tyres and showed impressive pace during a 24 lap stint and a 26 lap stint.

"I'm happy with my race today," he said. "Unfortunately I had an incident on the first corner at the start of the race where I was on outside of Lewis [Hamilton] and had a Force India that hit me and broke my front wing. That's when I thought that our race was going to be seriously compromised, which it would have been if the rain had come. The team did a fantastic job in giving me a great race strategy and we believed in ourselves to go for long stints with both sets of hard tyres."

Grosjean said his second set of tyres started to fade towards the end of the stint and he could not take the fight to team-mate Kimi Raikkonen as a result.

"I was still battling hard with the cars around me, but trying to save the tyres at the same time. It became harder towards the end of the race but I hung on to my sixth place. Kimi was too far in front of me to catch him at the end of the race. We both scored good points for the team, so it's been a good day."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
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