Lotus equals season best finish in 12th place
Lotus' Pastor Maldonado equalled his season-best finish of twelfth from his P19 starting position whilst Romain Grosjean was forced to retire from the German Grand Prix with a cooling issue on his E22.
The team demonstrated decent race pace as it adapted to its first race weekend without a hydraulically connected suspension system yet maintained its signature tyre performance longevity trait with Pastor making two pit stops instead of the three completed by most race finishers.
Romain Grosjean, DNF, E22-03: “We didn’t have an easy start with the soft tyres and I struggled to warm them up after the safety car too, but our overall pace was quite good today. I suffered from a loss of power due to an issue with our cooling system so was asked to switch off the car. It’s such a shame as we were on a different strategy from our rivals so we looked like we could be on course for scoring points. Sometimes that’s how it goes in motor racing.”
Pastor Maldonado, P12, E22-01: “It was a tough race from the beginning; the incident in turn one was quite tricky to avoid but then the pace looked consistent. I did my best to manage the tyre degradation, which was quite high, and we were able to do only two stops. Today’s lower temperature helped us there as well. The initial plan included three stops but we had a competitive first stint so we went for plan B which worked well for us today.”
Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal: "There was great evidence of the team’s spirit over the whole weekend in Hockenheim. We lost our suspension system which has meant a new challenge and some long days adapting the car to work in its new configuration. Despite this, we had good race strategies and looked to be managing the tyres well with the pit stop crew making some fantastically fast tyre changes during the course of the race. Pastor drove impeccably all race and was unlucky not to be rewarded with points. Romain drove superbly too, but we weren’t able to give him a reliable car today. We have improvements planned for Budapest and hope to perform much better there.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: "It was a good drive from Pastor from nineteenth to twelfth. We stretched out the tyre performance lift to make two stops possible rather than the three completed by most other teams as the E22 and Pastor were working well on this strategy. It’s a shame we couldn’t make up the last couple of places and get some points, but it was a great race from Pastor nonetheless. Unfortunately we had a failure on part of the water system on Romain’s car, which we will investigate back at Enstone to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
Simon Rebreyend, Renault Sport F1 track support leader: “The team has struggled to get a good balance on the car all weekend. It was always going to be a hard race from our starting positions so Pastor did a good job to get into 12th. On Romain’s car a cooling issue caused some problems and the team stopped it to avoid further damage to the Power Unit. All eyes forward to Hungary now.”
