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Romain Grosjean emerged unscathed from a high speed tangle with
the barriers whilst Pastor Maldonado finished in eighth in
today’s Russian Grand Prix. Romain had been fighting back from a
pit stop to replace his front wing after first lap contact
before hitting the barriers and retiring on lap 12.
Pastor Maldonado
Romain started from P8 on the grid on his qualifying super soft
compound tyres. He stopped for a new front wing and new soft
tyres at the end of the first lap. He retired from the race
after contact with the barriers on lap 12.
Pastor started from P14 on new soft tyres, changing to new super
soft tyres on lap 30.
Romain Grosjean, DNF, E23-04
“I lost the rear end in a very high speed corner going through
turn three and couldn’t recover it. We don’t know exactly why
yet. We need to check what has happened – was it a driver error
or something technical? - we’ll see. I feel sorry for the guys
because there will be a lot of work to repair the car. I feel
okay physically and I’ll certainly be a bit sore tomorrow
morning, but I’ll be completely fine again after a couple of
days. We lost some good points today but let’s understand what
happened and look forward to the next race.”
Pastor Maldonado, P8, E23-03
“It was a bit tough today but we opted for the right strategy
from the beginning starting on the soft tyres and going longer
on the first run. Unfortunately we lost a lot of time on the
second stint with the new super soft tyres. Our car didn’t
perform as expected at the beginning of the run but then after a
few laps we started to get back into the rhythm. We scored
points today which is very positive for the team and hopefully
we can continue to do so in the next races.”
Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal
"The most important thing from today is that Romain’s okay after
his crash. We were all very relieved when we saw him jump out of
the car and he was his usual happy self when he came to the
garage to tell everyone about what happened. Pastor had a solid
race into the points from a less than ideal starting position so
a good performance from him.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director
"We are looking at the data and speaking with Romain to
ascertain what happened but obviously we’re glad all the safety
measures did what they should. Pastor was able to make progress
in a race that saw a reasonable amount of incidents. Not our
strongest weekend so we’ll be looking to do better in Austin."
Images: Copyright
Lotus f1 Team |
