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Friday, 8 June
Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean took to the
track for the first practice sessions at the
Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montréal ahead of
Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix. A dry morning
session was filled with running in anticipation
of a wet afternoon. The afternoon yielded a dry
session too; the rain not coming until
immediately afterwards.
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director -
Technical programme notes
In FP1 we attempted to condense the programmes
of both FP1 and FP2 into a single session. The
red flag period interrupted this somewhat.
Some of the expected rain came before the FP2
session, but not sufficiently to disrupt running
so we were able to complete a good number of
laps, despite another red flag period.
We evaluated our new Montréal specification rear
wing and ran race simulations.
What we learned today:
Our base setup appears to work solidly, with the
Montréal specification rear wing delivering the
expected performance.
We are still working on refining the setup to
ensure both drivers are happy.
Our position in the times does not reflect our
pace due to the different programme we ran today.
Kimi Räikkönen, E20-03
Free practice 1: P15, 1:17.014, 42 laps
Free practice 2: P15, 1:16.652, 33 laps
Kimi: “It was an okay day for us. We expected
rain in the afternoon so we used the super soft
tyres in the morning to make sure we could do
some long runs, and we completed everything we
needed to do today as the rain didn’t come until
later. I’m not 100% happy with my setup and I
think we’re missing a trick somewhere. It’s not
a major issue, but I know we can go faster.
Let’s see how it goes tomorrow, anything can
happen and hopefully it’s a little warmer as
that usually seems to help.”
Romain Grosjean, E20-04
Free practice 1: P14, 1:16.890, 36 laps
Free practice 2: P14, 1:16.360, 29 laps
Romain: “Today was my first time at the Circuit
Gilles Villeneuve and I really enjoyed it. It’s
not an easy track, and the weather wasn’t what
we’re expecting for the rest of the weekend so
it’s a shame not to get some running in warmer
conditions. We’ve spent a lot of time learning
how the car behaves here and trying a few
different things with the setup. We have a good
amount of data, but obviously we’ll need to work
just as hard tomorrow if the temperatures are
higher. The car felt good and we did a few laps
on the super soft tyres as well, so overall it
was quite a useful day.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:
“We ran the option tyres in first practice with
some high fuel loads. The rain held off so we
ended up running just one set of tyres for
second practice which is why our times looked a
little bit slower than others’. Neither driver
was 100% happy with their car, so we spent some
time working with setup changes. Romain felt his
car was a little too biased to the front, but he
was much happier with the changes made. Kimi
paid attention to improving his car over the
kerbs as it was a little bit too harsh to start
with; steadily improving through the day. I’m
confident our finishing positions in FP2 will
not reflect where we’ll be in qualifying
tomorrow.”
Saturday, 9 June
Romain Grosjean set the seventh fastest time
whilst Kimi Räikkönen suffered a hydraulic issue
which prevented him from climbing higher than
twelfth during qualifying for tomorrow’s
Canadian Grand Prix.
Kimi Räikkönen, E20-03. Q: P12, 1:14.734.
FP3: P9, 1:14.997
“Obviously it’s disappointing to go out in Q2
but we had some issues with the differential
which meant the car wasn’t handling as it should.
When the grid is so tight it makes a big
difference not having the car exactly as you
like it. Still, we had no issues on the long
runs yesterday, we have options to choose from
with the tyres, and the warmer weather is
definitely suiting us better so hopefully we can
put everything right before tomorrow and go from
there. The race is where it counts, so let’s see
what we can do.”
Romain Grosjean, E20-04. Q: P7, 1:14.645.
FP3: P8 1:14.873
“For sure we wanted a bit more from qualifying
but this is a tricky circuit to get right, and
the big variation between conditions yesterday
and today didn’t help. The warmer temperatures
definitely suited us more but not quite as well
as we thought. The car felt pretty strong but my
last run could have been better, which is a
shame. Still, making it through to Q3 is never a
bad thing and it’s a long race tomorrow. Our car
has been quite easy on tyres so far this season
and hopefully that could make the difference.
Last time I started in P7 we ended up on the
podium, so let’s hope it can happen again
tomorrow!”
Alan Permane, Director of Trackside
Operations:
“Good, but not great...”
How do you assess today’s qualifying
performance?
“We had a problem with the hydraulics on Kimi’s
car in the session which meant the differential
was not working properly, so he did a good job
to qualify where he did. Romain went through to
the final qualifying session comfortably and
then did a really good first timed lap in that
session on scrubbed tyres. The new tyres didn’t
give him the grip and confidence he expected and
his lap on these wasn’t any faster. It’s unusual
that we would have a warm-up issue here in these
conditions, but we’ll be looking at everything
to understand what happened.”
How difficult has it been to read the track
here?
“The track was very dirty after yesterday’s rain
so we saw a lot of evolution today, though it
wasn’t particularly tricky to predict. Having
said that we’ve had a little bit more trouble
than usual setting the cars up; just finding the
right balance with the heavy breaking here,
making it comfortable enough into the corner and
not having too much understeer mid-corner.
Certainly with Romain it’s fair to say that he’s
not as comfortable as he normally is with his
car”
Could Kimi’s hydraulic problem in qualifying
carry over into the race?
“I have no doubt that we’ll resolve Kimi’s issue
for tomorrow. We can see the symptoms clearly on
the data and we recognised it very early on. We
informed Kimi that there was a problem during
qualifying. It wasn’t something we could easily
remedy during the session but I’m very confident
that we’ll find the problem overnight and fix
it.”
What are the strategy considerations for
tomorrow?
“In terms of strategy we’ll be assessing
different options. Tyre degradation is very low
here, so we could see a few teams attempt a one
stop race. Overtaking is very much possible here
with the long straights and the DRS; it won’t be
easy by any means but certainly simpler than in
Monaco.”
Sunday, 11 June
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, helping the team
move 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.
Romain started on used super softs and changed
to new softs on lap 21.
Kimi started on new softs and changed to new
super softs on lap 40.
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
“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
“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.” |
