Booth takes positives away from Suzuka

A double finish of 20th and 21st for Marussia Virgin Racing’s Timo Glock and Jerome D’Ambrosio may not have captured the attention of the Japanese crowd, but the manner in which it was achieved was credible all the same for the Yorkshire team.

Pit-stop mishaps, near-misses on the track and a battle between their two drivers for supremacy led to a very entertaining afternoon for the Dinnington-based operation.

“This wasn’t the most straightforward of weekends for us and today’s race continued in much the same vein,” explained team principal John Booth.

“Our strategy didn’t play out in the way that we had hoped and we lost some time with our pitstops as well.

“Early in the race we suffered a problem with our timing information on the pitwall and unfortunately this was at a critical time in the tyre lifecycle, so we really had to think on our feet.

“Despite all of these problems, we were still able to finish ahead of our nearest competitor and with both cars, which are positives to take away from the race.

“We’ll be back on track in Korea in just a few days’ time so we will regroup quickly and implement the necessary improvements.

“Congratulations to Sebastian Vettel on his second world title. For us, we now head to Yeongam with quite a tough turnaround ahead but hopefully a positive weekend.”

For lead driver Glock, the task over the coming days ahead of the Korean Grand Prix is to improve the reliability of the cars.

After tussling with his Belgian team-mate for track position towards the end of the race, the German said: “We got both cars home no problem and we got the best out of the cars.

“We have to look at the car set-up again as it was okay, but not magic.”