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It was almost a top-ten
finish for Lotus F1 Team in an eventful Singapore Grand Prix.
A mid-race safety car helped determine strategy and Pastor found himself
in tenth position as those ahead pitted for new rubber. With the
performance life of his – and Romain’s – soft tyres ebbing, so their
quicker rivals on fresher rubber were able to gobble up the positions.
Twelfth for Pastor and thirteenth for Romain was the eventual result
after a long, hot and hard weekend.
“We got the maximum out of our performance today and we had a strong
consistent race,” said Pastor.
“I’m pretty happy about this after the issues we had earlier in the
weekend. I pitted once more than the others during the safety car period
but it didn’t affect my position. It was a tough race, especially the
last ten laps where the tyres needed a lot of managing, but I think we
were able to do a great race today.”
Romain lost position to Pastor at the safety car restart, and was
thereafter unable to get past his team-mate.
“It was hot out there,” he said. “Things were looking pretty alright
until the safety car, we were fighting for points. Unfortunately, I
tried to attack too hard on the restart. I wanted to give it everything
and with cold soft tyres after a slow safety car period, it was just too
much once at the corner. From then on, I couldn’t pass back up through
the field to get points.”
Deputy Team Principal, Federico Gastaldi, gave his assessment of the day.
"We were very close to scoring points with Pastor and Romain,” he said.
“Unfortunately we couldn’t convert the potential into reality in the end
but the team did a great job to get both cars to finish the race after
the difficulties that we had through the course of the weekend. So I’m
happy. Not rock and roll, but happy.”
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