Kubica: Dry set-up key to podium

The Pole managed an overheating car to record his and the BMW teams most convincing result of the season.

"It has been a difficult season for our team, I think yesterday was a big part of the job," Kubica said afterwards. "We knew it might be a dry race today so we decided to keep our low downforce configuration car that we had on Friday.

"It was hard to drive in the water [in qualifying]. Nick Heidfeld went out in Q1, it was not easy to drive a car in the wet. I managed to qualify eighth and some people were disappointed about this qualifying, I don't know why because maybe they think miracles happen!"

"Today I had good pace, consistent. I was a bit surprised about the slow pace initially from Rubens and Mark, I was able to keep with them.

"But we had straight away the problem with the water temperature and I had to reduce the revs on lap 10. I had to pull out every time on a straight line, slip stream, just trying to cool down the temperatures and bring car home."

Kubica suggested he could have delivered an even more competitive performance but for bad timing emerging from his first pitstop.

"I was very unlucky with my first pit stop, I got stuck behind four cars, Kamui Kobayashi, Kazuki Nakajima, Jenson Button and Sebastian Vettel. I was heavy and they were light, I had no chance to overtake them, I had no chance, so Mark Webber built up a good lead.

"After that I tried to look after tyres and keep the gap to Rubens, it paid off, I had problems with tyre degradation, gaps quite easy and I brought car home."