Kovalainen says fourth place was possible

Both Kovalainen and teammate Giancarlo Fisichella had a tough day, the Finn unable to maximise his car's potential and having to settle for ninth place.

The Renault driver reckons his car was good enough to finish in fourth.

"The start of the race was a disaster for me: I made a good start and climbed three positions, but the understeer was just really bad, with low grip," said Kovalainen. "Four cars passed me, and I lost too much time. We changed to dry tyres at exactly the right time, and after that the car was pretty good.

"In the middle of the race, I lost time in a very strange way: Kimi had just lapped me but he was on old wet tyres, while my dry tyres were new. I couldn't pass off-line because it was wet, and I didn't want to have an accident with a front-runner, so I lost about seven or eight seconds until I could overtake him.

"After that, I pushed as hard as possible, but I couldn't get past David (Coulthard) at the end: I was quicker, but not by enough. The car ended up running pretty well in the dry, but this result is because of my mistake in qualifying yesterday: without it, I would have been in the top ten, with a better result.

"The team deserved a better result than we got, as the potential was in the car to be fourth, and I'm sorry we couldn't do it for them today. Now we need to go to Brazil, and just go for broke."

Fisichella was left lamenting his strategy after crossing the line in 11th position.

"I did my best all the way through today, but I think we could have done better with the strategy," he said. "The car was very heavy and inconsistent at the start, and we could have been much faster on a lighter fuel load.

"We changed to dry tyres at the right moment, and after that, I knew I had one more stop to make so I just pushed to the limit. It nearly worked for us, but we just ran out of time. It is frustrating to finish only eleventh after overtaking so many cars today, especially because we were capable of more."