Kovy feels his race pace has improved

McLaren's Heikki Kovalainen says he feels he made good improvements in his race pace in Valencia, despite only finishing fourth after starting on the front-row last weekend.

Although the Finn’s qualifying and race result was the best of his season so far, his team boss Martin Whitmarsh said that his race pace, particularly after his pit stops, had still not been consistent enough after he lost places to Rubens Barrichello and then Kimi Raikkonen.

Whitmarsh's comments came just days after he told Kovalainen he needed to up his game over the final phase of the season if he was to earn a contract renewal at McLaren.

Speaking in a press conference at Spa on Thursday, Kovalainen said he hadn’t received any direct criticism about his race performances from the team but says he himself had realised he needed to do better in this area – something he reckons he started to do in Valencia.

“Well, first of all, I haven’t had any criticism about my race pace from anyone in the team,” he said.

“I myself have talked to many people in the team and said that I can do much better, and last weekend in Valencia, particularly, was quite a lot better.”

Kovalainen says working out how to get more performance out of the various tyre compounds has been something he has focussed on in recent weeks.

“I think it’s quite a lot down to driving style, how you manage these tyres,” he said.

“One weekend you have softer tyres, one weekend you’ve got harder tyres and how you manage them throughout the race is quite crucial, so that’s what I’ve been working on very hard in these last few weeks, especially this last week and a half, since we’ve been back at work.

“That’s all I can say, really.”

McLaren as a whole has played down its chances of repeating its front-running form from the last two races at the higher-speed Spa-Francorchamps, with the circuit’s long, fast corners still not expected to perfectly suit the MP4-24 despite the major recent improvements made to the car.

Kovalainen shares the team’s cautiousness heading into Friday’s first practice session, but is nevertheless confident the team will be in much better shape than at similar circuits earlier in the year when it failed to score points.

“I think the characteristics of the circuit previously this year have not favoured our car,” the Finn added.

“But, obviously, the last two races have been exceptionally good and if we could repeat that it would be fantastic.

“But like you said, expectations of the team are not quite as high because of the nature of the circuit but, who knows, we must not give up at this point.

“We will have to see how practice goes.

“I am quite confident that we have improved the high-speed performance of the car significantly since Silverstone time. I think it will be interesting to see where we end up.”

Source: ITV