Dennis praises Kovalainen's recovery

Kovalainen was only passed fit to race in Istanbul on Thursday, after escaping unhurt from his terrifying 145mph crash into the tyre barriers in Barcelona.

And with Kovalainen having reported no after-effects from the Spanish crash, Dennis has praised his Finnish driver and the preparations his team made to help the recovery process.

"It was a remarkable recovery," said Dennis. "Of course, your body heals itself and you have to work hard on the recovery process, but I think that was made especially possible by the level of attention that we put into Heikki's recovery.

"Once we'd got the scans, we went through a very careful process over two or three days of stabilising him in Spain and then he flew to Finland.

"We had two series of scans through his recovery and they were all actually clear, but we went into a very high level of resolution, we could see some trauma in his head and we saw that recovery as he started to intensify his training.

"I think one of the things that was good for us is we have baseline numbers on all the drivers and they're measured on a regular basis against different parameters. Ultimately, when he went through all those tests he exceeded all those numbers he'd set before.

"So to have the ability to have a mechanism to tell the driver - we can tell you from the science of the situation that he's fitter than he's ever been, allows him to hit the ground running.

"He was very quick in the first 15 minutes and that brings into effect the psychology and other factors when faced with that big accident, and coming back so quickly."

Kovalainen himself admitted that he would probably have been left frustrated if he had not been allowed to race in Turkey this weekend.

"I enjoy working in F1 and enjoy these days the most - having a race is the best part of the job," said the Finn.

"Obviously, after such an incident it's good to have a bit of time off and recover but at the end of last week and the beginning of this I was started to get bored.

"Had that gone on longer I think it might have caused a mental problem if I had not been able to drive, so it's good that there was a race straight away."