Virgin Racing driver Sam Bird was happy with his fourth place finish despite finishing less than a tenth behind Nelson Piquet Jr in third.

The 28-year old had a great pit stop which saw him overtake Jerome d’Ambrosio who was running in fourth place before the drivers entered the pits. The British driver has struggled in the pits lately but was delighted that his team timed the stop to perfection.

“The pit stop was very important for my race otherwise we would have finished in fifth place, so full credit goes to the team for getting the timing perfect. From P10 on the grid if you told me we would have finished P4 I would have taken it, but I am a bit disappointed to miss out on third, as a podium would have been nice here but fourth is not too bad,” said Bird.

The Putrajaya race winner was millimeters away from being collected in the second corner collision between Daniel Abt, Bruno Senna and Nicolas Prost.

“I missed it by millimeters. I was right there with them and I think Bruno almost went over me. It is a very difficult situation it proves that the cars are strong and I was happy to miss that mess,” said the 28-year old.

The British driver is happy with the progress the team is making towards the end of the season, but feels his championship battle has been haunted with bad luck over the last couple of rounds and is hopeful to turn it around in the final four races of the season.

“Overall we have made good progress towards Berlin, but if you look at the last couple of races in Miami we led it, in Argentina we were about to take the lead but we got a drive-through and this one we had the pace to battle Buemi. So in Miami and Argentina we hardly scored any points and we could have got 40 or 50 points out of it which is highly frustrating,” said Bird.

Jamie Alguersaurai, Bird’s teammate at Virgin Racing didn’t last too long in Monaco after he was eliminated before reaching the first corner. The Spanish driver came here full of confidence that he had a better feeling with the car and despite his DNF he still left Monaco with his head held high.

“Everybody loves racing here in Monaco and I was very excited for today’s race, especially after a good morning where I finished second in the practice session. If I did not have the ten-place grid penalty then perhaps today would have been very different for me but that is racing and something you have to accept as a driver.”

“I am just glad that everyone involved in the crash that ended my race is safe and that shows how robust these Formula E cars are. The positives from today are that I am very happy with the car set-up and so now we have to think ahead to two weeks time in Berlin and get ready to score some points there,” said Alguersuari.