Heidfeld laments poor start to race

Nick Heidfeld believes Renault were punished for their poor start to Sunday's European Grand Prix in Valencia.

Renault:
Nick Heidfeld: "What cost us a little bit today [Sunday] was our starts. I lost a position to Adrian (Sutil) and then had to fight hard not to lose more. I finished more or less where I had been for the majority of the race (behind Sutil). I managed to overtake him once but then he used DRS to get past me and unfortunately I was not able to attack any harder to get by him.
"It's still another point gained for the team, but I did not expect to finish behind one Force India and one Toro Rosso. Overall this weekend, we pushed hard but it just has not been possible to get the pace out of the car that we wanted at this track.
"We will remain optimistic, though because Silverstone is a track with a lot of high speed corners, and our car performs well in these conditions. We will also see how the new regulations affect our car, but I think it will have a positive impact for our team."
Vitaly Petrov: "Of course I am disappointed with today's [Sunday] race. I was very surprised that the tyres did not last very well for us, as some of our competitors were able to do a two-stop race whereas we needed three.
"We know that our car's pace was not fantastic here and the race has strongly highlighted that we have work to do because we should finishing easily in the top ten. The incident with Schumacher did not cause a puncture. He seemed to exit the pits very quickly and did not seem to be able to stop his car coming into the first corner.
"Luckily, I saw him in my mirror but there was still some contact. We need to sit down now and carefully analyse where and why we are losing pace so we can have a better race at Silverstone."
Sauber:
Sergio Perez: "In the beginning I had a very difficult time with the harder tyres, but also with the softer ones I had a lack of grip and later in the race I lost a lot of time due to blue flags.
"It was not an easy Grand Prix for a comeback and I'm happy I was able to race again. I gave a hundred percent, but I'm afraid this was the maximum we could get today [Sunday]. However, we will analyse how we can improve for the future, and I'm sure Silverstone will be better."
Kamui Kobayashi: "It was a very tough race for me. I struggled all the time and never had the performance to fight. It was difficult to manage the tyres. I tried to take care of them as well as possible, but they were gone pretty quickly.
"Then, at those times when I wanted to push, I got stuck in traffic. We have some work to do, this is for sure."
Team Lotus:
Heikki Kovalainen: "For me that was a very good race. I'm happy that we seem to have regained the early season form after Monaco and Canada where I wasn't really feeling too comfortable in the car.
"Today the conditions were pretty hot out there but I felt good all afternoon - I've prepared myself physically for this sort of heat so it wasn't hard at all to push right to the end. I didn't have any issues and after we went to the three stop strategy I was able to keep up a good pace after each stop.
"We know where we have to improve the car to keep taking the fight to the teams ahead, and that will come in time, but this is a long-term plan and we are definitely on the right course."
Jarno Trulli: "That was a good race for me. We tried a couple of different strategies to cover all our options and even though my second set was gone by the end I definitely enjoyed myself out there.
"This was always going to be a track where we knew we would have to keep pushing to get anything out of it, but it's satisfying for the team to get both cars to the end and be well clear of the cars behind us."