Heikki Kovalainen’s chances of taking a better result in the Monaco Grand Prix were hit by the race director’s decision to restart the event while he was still trying to catch up to the tail of the field under the final safety car, according to McLaren.
Being a lap down, Kovalainen was entitled to a ‘wave by’ under the pace car, but a delay in confirmation and then the decision to restart the race while he, and others, were still trying to catch up to the back of the pack left him too far adrift to make more of the incident between countryman Kimi Raikkonen and Adrian Sutil. He eventually finished just three seconds behind seventh-placed Kazuki Nakajima, and only five adrift of Rubens Barrichello in sixth spot.
“Heikki was one lap down, behind Adrian Sutil, so we asked the FIA whether he was allowed to pass Adrian and make up the lost lap, as the rules permit,” McLaren CEO Martin Whitmarsh revealed, “He was eventually cleared to pass, but the race then restarted while he was still in no-man’s land. He carried on pushing, though, and scored a valuable point.”
Unlike Hamilton’s problems at the start in Bahrain last month, Kovalainen’s inability to get away from his fourth place at the start of the warm-up lap in Monaco was down to system failure.
“Just before the start, he lost control of his clutch,” Whitmarsh revealed, “It was probably a software glitch with the monitor that was plugged into the car, but we need to investigate that. We changed the steering wheel, reset the system and got him going, but Heikki was very unlucky because he subsequently spent much of his race in traffic.”
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