Formula F1™ Australian Grand Prix
March 22, 2012
The opening race of the 2012 F1TM season in Melbourne ended with disappointment for MERCEDES AMG PETRONAS after Nico Rosberg finished in 12th position and Michael Schumacher retired early on lap 11.
After an excellent start, Schumacher was running in third position when a gearbox problem forced him to retire. Despite an unfortunate end to the race he concluded, “I know things like this happen in racing, and our reliability is not in question. We can now build on that and start improving further.”
A perfect start for Rosberg saw him move up into fourth position- however, problems with tyre degradation and a clash with Perez on the last lap took away a points scoring finish and caused him to drop back to 12th place.
After the race he said “We have a lot of work to do to understand what went wrong, and how we can use the full potential which our car definitely shows.”
Team Principal Ross Brawn summed up the team’s performance saying, “With the development of the circuit and the track temperatures, we fell out of the working window, and struggled with degradation. However, we remain positive as both here and over the winter tests, we have demonstrated that we have a fundamentally quick car and we have a lot to build on. So we need to look at what happened today, unravel the problem and work out where we need to improve.”
Stay tuned for the next race of the season: The Malaysian Grand Prix held between the 23-25 March.
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