Lotus returns to the podium at Canada
Lotus F1 Team returned to the podium with a superb performance from Romain Grosjean, the Frenchman clinching his best Formula 1 result to date by climbing from seventh on the grid to second place in a searing Canadian Grand Prix. Kimi Räikkönen rose from twelfth on the grid to eighth at the chequered flag.
Today's result moves Lotus eleven points ahead of Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship. Lotus F1 Team have now scored more points from the seven races thus far in 2012 than during the entirety of the 2011 season.
The team is now the second highest scoring team over the last four races and have the second highest number of podiums this season.
Kimi Räikkönen, P8, E20-03:
Kimi started on new softs and changed to new super softs on lap 40.
“The car was a bit better in the race than it was in qualifying. I seemed to get stuck behind people a few times. The DRS zone is not very long, and it’s still a difficult battle if the car ahead of you is also using the DRS. We had a chance to do a bit better, but it didn’t quite all come together today. We scored points again so that’s always a good thing, especially this season. Qualifying yesterday wasn’t perfect so obviously that left us with more work to do. If you start further forward it’s easier to finish higher up the order. We’ll try to achieve that in the next race. ”
Romain Grosjean, P2, E20-04:
Romain started on used super softs and changed to new softs on lap 21.
“It’s been a great day for the team. It was an incredible race and the one stop strategy worked perfectly for us. It wasn’t an easy race, but we wanted to be aggressive to achieve a good result. Yesterday was a bit disappointing, but we learnt a lot from Friday to Saturday and the fruits of all these lessons were seen today. It wasn’t easy to manage the second set of tyres for so long, but it worked so I’ll happily do that again for another result like today. It’s fantastic to finish in second position on my first visit to Montreal, hopefully I will finish in first on my second time! I would like to thank the entire team for the amazing job we’ve done this weekend”
Eric Boullier, Team Principal:
"Today’s result is due to very good team work and keeping focused on the task at hand. The E20 was very well setup for the race, our strategies worked for both cars to finish much higher than they started and both drivers drove superbly. Romain drove an excellent race and P2 is superb for the whole team, especially everyone at Enstone who keeps pushing to develop every area of the car. We know that if we can get more in qualifying we will be able to achieve even better things in the races, so that is our task ahead.”
Alan Permane, Director of Trackside Operations:
“Today all went very much to plan. Coming into the race we were fairly confident that we could do a one stop strategy; it would be a bit tight on the tyres, but it was clear from Friday that the tyres had the pace and the durability to do one stop. Today was a lot hotter, and we had a fall back of a two stop strategy, which we didn’t need. Romain did everything he needed today and it’s a well deserved result. For Kimi we used the opposite tyre strategy from Romain by starting him on the soft tyre and it worked for him to finish four places higher than he started in what was a very competitive race. It’s two very solid drives we’ve had today so we’re very happy to bounce back from Monaco in emphatic fashion. ”
Ricardo Penteado, Renault Sport F1 Team Support Leader:
“A fantastic double points finish for the team with a career-best result for Romain. It was not an easy race as fuel consumption was difficult to gauge on Friday, but we took a risk to go very aggressive and it was the right choice: Romain’s pace in the last few laps was impressive. Congratulations to all as the result moves us ahead of Ferrari in the championship now.”
