Kobayashi: I’d have been fine on 2 wheels!

Kamui Kobayashi said he was frustrated to have been caught up in the opening lap fracas at St Devote after retiring from the Monaco Grand Prix. The Japanese driver was hoping to build on his fifth place finish in Spain but was left with nowhere to go at the start when Romain Grosjean was tipped into a spin ahead of the field. Kobayashi clipped the rear of Grosjean's Lotus and went briefly airbourne, picking up damaged suspension in the process. Although initially able to continue, the damage was enough to force Kobayashi into retirement for the second time this season leaving the 25-year-old disappointed. “I had a great start and was fighting with Sebastian Vettel, so maybe could have been just behind him,” he reflected. “First Romain Grosjean went on the inside, but suddenly he came back on the outside. I tried to avoid him, but he didn't brake, hit my rear tyres and damaged my suspension. Maybe if I had had two wheels and not four, I would have been fine! It was too dangerous to continue to drive.” With Sergio Perez also failing to score, Monaco turned out to be a race to forget for Sauber, with head of track engineering Giampaolo Dall'Ara insisting that the team had to put the weekend behind it. “It is difficult to decide whether to laugh or cry,” he said. “On the one hand we can be very happy about how quick our car was, especially on a track which historically doesn't favour us. On the other hand if something was going to go wrong then we were in the middle of it. Kamui just had bad luck being hit by Romain Grosjean's Lotus in the first corner. Due to a part of the suspension being damaged he had to retire after six laps. “It is to Sergio's credit that he didn't give up today despite his difficult starting position and heavy traffic. He made some good overtaking manoeuvres. On strategy we actually didn't help him. The ideal time for a tyre change obviously would have been earlier, but we calculated more rain would come and lengthened his stint a bit. However, later in the race this turned out to be an advantage as his tyres then were fresher than those of the other drivers. We clearly wanted points here and didn't get them.”