Carroll Not Ruling Out Title

Carroll elected not to start the first race after developing engine problems on his out lap, and climbed to eleventh in race two, outside the points.

The Ulsterman has failed to score in the last four races, and is now 35 points behind championship leader Heikki Kovalainen with five meetings remaining.

"You've still got to hope for the title, although it's going to be tough to win it, obviously," said Carroll. "You've got to be realistic, but we can get into the top three - you've just got to keep pushing and maybe get a few good results and bounce back, and maybe win some more races. We'll get it there, we'll be alright."

"Going into the first race I felt quite good, and I had a good race car and maybe could have done something, but then the engine went on the outlap when the oil pressure dropped and basically it was going to go bang in a minute.

"So we decided not to start the race in case we couldn't get off the line, because it felt really bad changing gear on low revs, so I didn't want to stall or cause a massive shunt as the drivers pulled off.

"And a problem is not going to fix itself, is it? So I pulled into the pits and one of the engine guys was there but he didn't have his laptop switched on, so that was a bit of a problem. And that's about it really.
 
"I got out and did some laps and got a feel for the balance and then parked it up because it was going to go bang."