Lotus and Renault to investigate repeating issues
Lotus F1 Team endured a double retirement in today’s Canadian Grand Prix after Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean both returned their cars to the pit garage before the end of the 70-lap race. Pastor suffered from a power unit related issue whilst Romain’s rear wing was damaged.
Romain Grosjean, DNF, E22-03: “Today was not great in terms of pace for me, however there are some positives looking forwards. We can see that a Renault Sport F1 team can win a race so we have a target there, especially when the win came at a circuit that is not thought to be one of the stronger ones for them. Congratulations to Daniel for his win which I watched in the garage. The rear wing of my car broke, so it was safer to retire than risk a potentially dangerous situation. We have a lot of work to do, so it's time to go home and try to understand our problems and come back stronger in the next races."
Pastor Maldonado, DNF, E22-01: “We had a similar problem to yesterday where we lost a lot of power. It's a shame as the race was going very well, and we had an excellent pace - to be honest I was quite surprised by the car. The strategy was good, as we were looking for one stop whereas all the other cars were planning two stops, so we were looking very strong today and even without stopping we were on a similar pace with the other teams. We just need to look into exactly what happened and work hard to fix the problems we are having. We’ve shown we can be competitive."
Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal: "Today saw a great Formula 1 race and we must say congratulations to Daniel Riccardo for his first win. For us, it was certainly not our finest moment. Pastor was driving very strongly with a good strategy which should have seen him finish strongly in the points. He had an issue related to his power unit from the start of the race and eventually he had to retire because of this. This is frustrating for all involved and we will do everything we can to eradicate issues like this in the future. Romain had a tough race where he pushed all the way, but there was a problem with his rear wing. Again, not ideal and something we need to understand and rectify. We have a busy few weeks before Austria.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: "A tough day for us. Pastor drove well and did everything we asked of him and could have finished strongly relative to his starting position. Romain struggled for pace and suffered from a rear wing problem. We need to analyse what happened with both cars. Pastor’s problem was related to his power unit and we had this issue from the start of the race. We’re working closely with Renault Sport F1 to understand what happened.”
Simon Rebreyend, Renault Sport F1 track support leader: “Obviously not the result we wanted this weekend. On the formation lap a wastegate issue hampered the car but using the fail mode we were able to race nearly normally until other issues on the energy management side forced us to retire. We’ll investigate the reasons in detail next week. Romain then had his issue with the rear wing, which was a real shame as we could have taken some points with the way the race turned out at the end.”
