Sebastien Buemi blamed a strange vibration coming from his tyres for losing two places near the end of the Turkish Grand Prix.
The Toro Rosso driver looked set for a seventh pace finish but was overtaken by the Renaults of Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov after he could not even hold the steering wheel because of the vibration. Buemi said the problem needed to be analysed as he did not think it was down to tire wear. Still, the Swiss driver was pleased with his points finish after having started from 16th position.
"In general I am very happy with my race and I don't think I could have done better," said Buemi. "However, it's true that in the final two laps I lost two places and if not for this we could have brought home a seventh place finish. But I could not even hold the steering wheel anymore, because there was so much vibration coming through from the tires: it was not due to tire wear, so we will have to analyze carefully what happened as I had not felt this before. All the same, it was a great race and I pulled off plenty of overtaking moves and I fought hard.
"Scoring points after starting 16th is reason to be pleased. We decided to do only three pit stops, although it was clear that here it did not cost that much time to make a pit stop so that was an interesting situation. We are continuing to develop the car and have more parts coming which I hope can keep us fighting for points in the next few races."
Teammate Jaime Alguersuari finished down in 16th after struggling with his tires during the race.
"I suffered a lot from degradation on the rear tires, especially in the final stint," he said. "This meant I had a massive amount of oversteer, which is why I really had to come in for an additional fourth stop for fresh tires toward the end.
"I don't understand why my teammate suffered much less than me in this respect, so we need to look at all the data to find out why."