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Friday, 25 October
Romain Grosjean ended the first day of
practice for the Indian Grand Prix with the
third fastest lap of the day, whilst Kimi
Räikkönen was eighth at the Buddh International
Circuit. Both drivers completed their Friday
programmes, with extra focus given to long runs
on Pirelli’s soft and medium tyre allocation.
Technical programme notes
Both cars ran trouble-free through both sessions
enabling a variety of set-up permutations to be
evaluated.
Pirelli’s medium (white) tyre was used in the
morning and the medium and soft (yellow)
compound slick tyres were used in the afternoon
session.
What we learned today:
The E21 demonstrated strong potential using both
tyre compounds.
Kimi Räikkönen, E21-05
Free practice 1: P17, 1:28.730, 18 laps
Free practice 2: P8, 1:26.632, 32 laps
Kimi: “The car feels pretty okay now, but we can
still make it better. We made quite a few
changes in the morning as it didn’t feel so good
then, but it’s much better now and we should be
able to make more progress for tomorrow. The
track is quite slippery, but that improves with
time and the car gets better too.”
Romain Grosjean, E21-04
Free practice 1: P4, 1:26.990, 20 laps
Free practice 2: P3, 1:26.220, 36 laps
Romain: “That was a good start to the weekend.
The car feels good and we made progress through
the day to make it better. It’s still a struggle
to find grip here which can make things
interesting as you find the limits, but the pace
of our car relative to our rivals looks quite
good. I’m hopeful of another solid day tomorrow
which should give us another strong qualifying
position if the evidence of today is anything to
go by. We’ll do everything we can to take the
fight to Red Bull.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:
“It was a difficult morning for Kimi who wasn’t
happy with the balance of his car so his
engineers made a reasonable amount of changes to
the set-up over lunch, meaning the car was much
more to his liking in the afternoon. Romain was
generally happy with his car and just made minor
changes to the set-up to get it 100% to his
liking. We completed a good number of laps on
low and high fuel with both tyres and we’re
looking in strong shape. The Red Bulls are
unfortunately looking incredibly quick, but
we’re leading the charge behind them.”
Saturday, 26 October
Kimi Räikkönen qualified sixth with team-mate
Romain Grosjean seventeenth ahead of tomorrow’s
Indian Grand Prix. Warm, dry conditions remained
throughout the day at the Buddh International
circuit, with the poor visibility that had
hampered FP3 earlier in the day clearing
sufficiently to allow un-interrupted running for
qualifying.
A tightly contested Q1 session saw Kimi make two
runs – one on each tyre compound – to eventually
progress in P6 using the soft rubber. Romain by
contrast ran a single stint on medium tyres; a
gamble which narrowly failed to pay off as the
Frenchman found himself eliminated at the first
hurdle, despite posting a time just a second
away from the fastest car.
Q2 was more straightforward for the remaining
E21; Kimi progressing comfortably to the top ten
in fourth with a strong pair of single lap runs
on the medium tyres. The final session saw the
Finn take sixth spot at the flag with a single
run on soft rubber.
Kimi Räikkönen, E21-05
Q: P6, 1:25.248
FP3: P11, 1:26.635
“It wasn’t an ideal qualifying session and I’m
still having some problems with understeer, but
the car did feel better overall than yesterday.
The tyres have to be managed over a full lap for
qualifying so we are where we are on the grid.
We’ll see what happens tomorrow and I’ll try to
do as well as I can. Overall, the car feels
slightly better than in the last few races;
still not where we want it to be, but slightly
better.”
Romain Grosjean, E21-04
Q: P17, 1:26.577
FP3: P5, 1:26.350
“We took a gamble once again to try just one run
on the prime tyres in Q1, and although it’s been
a successful tactic for us recently it didn’t
pay off this time. The times were much tighter
than expected and ultimately we made a
miscalculation with the cut-off time. It’s easy
to look back and think what might have been, but
we made the decision together and unfortunately
in the end it was the wrong one. It’s tough to
overtake here so it’s going to be a long race
from seventeenth on the grid. We’ll have to pull
off something quite special with the strategy to
take anything from there, but of course we’ll
analyse the options overnight to see what’s
possible. For sure we won’t be leading after the
first corner this time, but we’ll do our best.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:
How was qualifying for the team?
In hindsight we made the wrong call with Romain.
We expected him to progress quite comfortably
through Q1 on the medium tyre and unfortunately
this wasn’t the case. Clearly, he’s starting a
long way out of position and will need a strong
charge through the field to make it into the top
ten, but we’re extremely confident that he’ll be
able to do so. How far into the points he can
progress will depend on the start and our
management of the tyres. It was a reasonably
straightforward session for Kimi with no real
dramas. He’ll be the first to admit that
qualifying hasn’t been going to plan for him
recently, and he’s about where we expected him
to be after free practice this morning. As
always we’re confident that his race pace will
be exemplary, so we’re anticipating a very
strong race from him starting from sixth on the
grid.
Where do we stand in terms of setup to help
the drivers progress through the field tomorrow?
We’ve taken this into account after seeing how
tough overtaking can be here during last
season’s race. Kimi’s car is certainly more
biased towards race pace than single lap
performance, and we’ll be looking at ways to
help Romain carve his way up the order overnight
too. Our race pace on the medium tyre looked
strong during practice, so we’re hopeful of
making progress.
What are the tyre strategy considerations for
the race?
Today very much followed the pattern of the
weekend so far, with the option tyre suffering
from blistering and graining while the prime
looks to be a very strong choice for the race.
We’ve seen so far that there’s about a second
per lap difference in long run pace between the
two. One of the keys to the race is certainly
making the front left tyre – and to a lesser
extent the front right – last when using the
soft compound; particularly on high fuel at the
start of the race.
Sunday, 27 October
Romain Grosjean drove a perfect race from
seventeenth on the Indian Grand Prix grid to
third at the chequered flag – despite enduring
problems with his engine’s pneumatic system –
whilst Kimi Räikkönen found the limits of his
tyre’s performance as the team attempted a
one-stop strategy.
Romain managed his car well to take the final
podium slot while the team and engine partners
Renault devised a strategy to limit the air
consumption of his engine’s pneumatic system.
Kimi ran out of tyre performance near the end of
his race, resulting in a late pit stop and the
consolation of the race’s fastest lap.
Kimi retains third place in the Drivers’
Championship on 183 points; 14 points ahead of
Lewis Hamilton and with a reduced gab to
Fernando Alonso on 207 ahead. Romain rises to
seventh position on an equal points tally – 102
– to Felipe Massa in eighth. The team remains
fourth in the Constructors’ Championship on 285
points from Ferrari’s 309.
Over the previous four races – Singapore, Korea,
Japan and India – Lotus F1 Team has scored the
second highest points tally of any outfit on the
grid with a haul of 94, behind only Red Bull
Racing on 118. In that same period, only
Sebastian Vettel has outscored Kimi and Romain;
100 points for the German compared to the Finn’s
49 and Frenchman’s 45.
Kimi started from P6 with a scrubbed set of soft
tyres, changing to new mediums on lap 7 and
making a late stop for a further set of mediums
on lap 58.
Romain started from P17 on a new set soft tyres,
changing to a new set of mediums on lap 13.
Kimi Räikkönen, P7, E21-05
“We ran maybe the first twenty laps with no
brakes as they had overheated massively, so
every time I got close to somebody I lost
braking. At the end of the race I ran out of
tyre performance too so it’s been a pretty
disappointing day. I knew the tyres would drop
off quite quickly, but there wasn’t much to lose
between trying to get to the end and making an
extra pit stop in terms of time lost. In the end
it didn’t work.”
Romain Grosjean, P3, E21-04
“If you had told me yesterday that I’d be on the
podium here I would have said you were crazy!
Straight from the beginning of the race I felt
very comfortable on the option tyres and we
looked in pretty good shape, then we fitted the
mediums and the car was really quick. I lost
quite a lot of time behind [Esteban] Gutierrez
which maybe cost us the fight for second, but we
managed to come back from that well. When I saw
that I was fourth in front of [Felipe] Massa
with 27 laps to go I knew it was going to be
close with him as we had to take care of the
tyres, plus we had an engine issue at the end of
the race which made things quite tricky. In the
final laps Kimi was really struggling with his
tyres so I managed to pass him and luckily had
enough pace to keep Felipe behind. Before the
race our best prediction was fourth if we had a
strong start and a perfect race, so it was an
amazing result and a great performance from the
team.”
Eric Boullier, Team Principal
“It’s been an eventful weekend. In the end it
was a brilliant job from the team and a great
performance from Romain, who had a very strong
drive and managed to conserve his tyre
performance right to the end. He was fast today
despite having to nurse his engine, and being on
the podium is a good reward for the whole team.
Obviously it’s disappointing that the tyres
couldn’t last long enough for Kimi as being
third and fourth would have been an amazing
result for the team and very useful in the
Constructors’ Championship, but we’ll keep
fighting hard until the end of the season and
we’ll give some headaches to the other teams. We
give our congratulations to Sebastian Vettel and
Red Bull for their Championship victory today,
and also our promise that we’re working hard to
give them a tougher battle in 2014.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director
“It was a fantastic race from both drivers, even
though the strategy didn’t quite work out for
Kimi. We started with a plan of two stops for
him but made the call to go for one after losing
time stuck behind Nico [Hulkenberg].
Unfortunately the tyres didn’t quite last as
long as he needed and he was forced into making
a late stop for fresh rubber. It was a fantastic
drive from Romain again and a great call from
our strategy team to move him from seventeenth
to third; that was just brilliant. Romain’s
engine pneumatic system’s air consumption was a
big worry and we had to use every trick in the
book to avoid him retiring as per Singapore.
Overall, a great team performance today.”
Ricardo Penteado, Renault Sport F1 Team Support
Leader
“A hard race today right until the end, and a
relief to get the eventual result! Romain did a
fantastic job to finish on the podium;
especially with having to manage a problem with
the pneumatic system. Unfortunately we had an
occurrence similar to the issue from Singapore –
despite having put a solution in place – so
we’ll look at this before Abu Dhabi. Also a big
congratulations to all at Red Bull; it’s great
to see another Renault powered title!”
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