SILVERSTONE, England // Kamui Kobayashi celebrated his and BMW Sauber's best result of the season yesterday and then revealed he had not even had to break a sweat to achieve it. The Japanese driver was sixth in the British Grand Prix, beating his seventh-place finish in Valencia two weeks earlier. The results all point to the Swiss team continuing their improvement after a poor start to the season.
"The race pace today was as good as I thought it would be," said Kobayashi, 23, who started 12th on the grid. "I was pretty confident before the race because I can really feel how the car is getting better and better now. "I had no chance to overtake anybody this time, but I still enjoyed the race. I didn't find it especially hard. I didn't even sweat." Kobayashi took advantage of a good start and smart pit strategy to make up places. As his rivals hit trouble he was able to move up to take the top-six spot. The impressive race followed a fine qualifying display by Kobayashi's teammate, Pedro de la Rosa; the Spaniard was ninth-fastest on the grid.
BMW Sauber continued to move up the order following recent technical updates to their Ferrari-powered package. De la Rosa was unable to translate a fast qualifying run into a high finish yesterday. He was forced to retire due to damage to his rear wing after being hit by the Force India of Adrian Sutil. De la Rosa was running 11th at the time of the incident. He had lost ground at the start after being pushed wide by Rubens Barrichello's Williams-Toyota.
"I was still racing for points when I was hit from behind at half distance of the race because not everybody in front of me had stopped by then," said De la Rosa. "Unfortunately the damage proved to be too bad to continue." @Email:gcaygill@thenational.ae