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Day 1, Friday 11 May 2012 Kimi
Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean took to the track
for the first practice sessions of the fifth
round of the 2012 Formula 1 World Championship
at the Circuit de Catalunya today in hot and dry
conditions. The Lotus F1 Team drivers ended the
sessions with the fifth and sixth fastest lap
times of the day.
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director -
Technical programme notes:
In FP1 we conducted aerodynamic evaluations, in
particular of our different front wing
specifications and also the latest floor
modifications using the hard compound Pirelli
tyre.
FP2 saw heavy fuel running, focusing on the long
run race performance of the hard and soft
compound tyres.
What we learned today:
Our lower fuel set-up changes have been
validated following developments tested in
Mugello.
The base set-up for the car works well with no
surprisess.
Kimi Räikkönen, E20-03
Free practice 1: P9, 1:25.285, 29 laps
Free practice 2: P5, 1:23.918, 32 laps
Kimi:
“There were no problems with the car and
everything felt good today. We tried a different
front wing, but in the car you can’t tell if it
makes much difference; that is why the team’s
engineers are looking at the data. I felt
comfortable and I think the work done at Mugello
and in the Windshear test programme have made
improvements. We’ll have to see tomorrow how
much pace everyone has when it comes to
qualifying as that’s when it matters. We’ve been
fast everywhere else so far and there’s nothing
to suggest we won’t be fast here again.”
Romain Grosjean, E20-04
Free practice 1: P7, 1:25.217, 16 laps
Free practice 2: P6, 1:23.964, 37 laps
Romain:
“It was a pretty good day today. The weather is
fantastic, the car feels great and the lap times
were promising; I’m a happy man. The balance
felt strong on both tyres and we were able to
complete long runs to give us valuable tyre data
for Sunday. I’m happy with the performance of
the car even when the tyres are nearer the end
of their performance life which is a good sign
for this weekend. It’s very close of course, so
qualifying will be interesting. I can’t wait for
tomorrow to come.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:
“The car looks to be working very well and we’re
happy with progress. Our long runs on the softer
tyres gave us good data for the race in terms of
degradation and how many laps they can last
before the performance drops away significantly.
From this we’ve had an initial look at our pit
stop strategy for Sunday. There were no problems
from either car and both drivers were pretty
happy with things. Some of work in Mugello
concentrated on how we run the cars on lower
fuel levels which is reflected by our better lap
time performance on a Friday than we’ve seen at
some other races.”
Day 2, Saturday 12 May 2012
Romain Grosjean qualified in P4 whilst Kimi
Räikkönen set the fifth fastest time under blue
skies and light clouds in qualifying for
tomorrow’s Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de
Catalunya
Kimi Räikkönen, E20-03. Q: P5, 1:22.487.
“I think we had a chance to be in the top three
but we’ve been fighting with the set-up quite a
bit today. We changed the car for qualifying and
actually it was the correct call in the end; it
was just a few small mistakes which cost me some
time on my Q3 lap. We’ll see how it goes
tomorrow in the race; the car has usually been
better on Sunday than it has been on Saturday,
so if that’s the case tomorrow we’ll be pretty
happy. A lot of small details will decide the
race and the tyres are one aspect of course. Our
long runs were promising yesterday, so we’re not
looking too bad. Hopefully we get a reasonable
start and we can be up at the right end and go
for it. I think we’ve got a good car and that’s
the main thing.”
Romain Grosjean, E20-04. Q: P4, 1:22.424.
“It was a good performance from the team,
especially as I didn’t run in FP3 because of a
fuel pressure problem. For the set-up we went
from what we’d found out yesterday and it worked
pretty well. Everyone did a good job to get the
car ready for qualifying after the problems of
the morning. We can be happy with what we have
achieved – of course you always want more but
this is the result for today. I think that I
could have been a little bit quicker, not too
much more. Tomorrow is going to be long; our
race pace did not look too bad but, of course,
we’ll have to manage tyre degradation.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:
“Today went relatively smoothly for us…”
How do you assess today’s qualifying
performance?
“Today went relatively smoothly for us. In Q3 I
think we could have had a little bit more from
both drivers’ laps. For Romain in particular –
after missing this morning’s practice – it was
an exceptional effort. Having the hard and soft
tyres as opposed to two compounds which sit
alongside each other (the medium and soft used
in Bahrain for example) meant we had to approach
qualifying differently as we all needed the
softer tyre to progress through Q1, limiting the
number of soft tyres available for the next two
sessions. We saw different approaches to this;
we’ll have to see in the race whose was
correct.”
How are we looking for the race?
“Our long run pace yesterday looked good so we
can be reasonably confident heading into the
race. Our target for today was to get both cars
into the top six; we’ve got both in the top five
so let’s try and exceed expectations once again
tomorrow.”
What are we thinking for tyre strategy heading
into tomorrow?
“We used three sets of soft tyres to go through
qualifying, but we have two new sets of the hard
compound Pirelli tyres. We are very flexible on
tyre strategy for tomorrow and we’ll be spending
a lot of time now looking at all the possible
permutations. There’s certainly no clear
solution shouting out at us at this stage, so we
have a lot of number crunching to do. We’ll be
starting both cars on scrubbed soft tyres, after
that it is still to be decided.” Day 3,
Sunday 13 May 2012, Race Kimi Räikkönen
and Romain Grosjean ensured that Lotus F1 Team
were the strongest points scoring team in a
fast-paced Spanish Grand Prix, finishing in
third and fourth position to move the team
within 14 points of second place in the
Constructors’ Championship.
Both cars started on used sets of yellow-marked
soft Pirelli P-Zero tyres.
Romain changed to a set of used softs on lap 10,
then made two further stops for new
silver-marked hard tyres on laps 26 and 51.
Kimi pitted for a set of used softs on lap 11,
then fresh sets of hards on laps 27 and 48.
Kimi Räikkönen, P2, E20-03
“I had a very good start and had a chance to
overtake on the outside, but we did not have
enough speed and I hit the limiter in fifth gear.
I am a bit disappointed because if everything
had gone right in the first part of the race, we
could have won. There was no issue with the
speed of the car, but it is so close between all
the teams that if you have a small problem or a
small issue it can cost so much. Our car can do
it, but everything has to fall into the right
place to be able to get on to the top step. My
first stint was okay, but I didn’t have the
speed to stay with the cars in front. We changed
the tyres and it seemed to be pretty good, but
we were too far away. At the end we needed a few
more laps and we could have fought for the win.
We’re not far away from it and so far we’ve made
good steps forwards; the car feels strong
everywhere.”
Romain Grosjean, P3, E20-04, Fastest lap of
the race: 1:26.250 (Lap 53, hard tyres)
“We lost position at the start and with it a bit
of front wing too! It was cooler today which
didn’t suit us so much. Despite this, I am very
happy with P4 especially when you look at
yesterday where I missed all of the final
practice session. Both cars finishing strongly
in the points is great for the team. It was
pretty difficult for me at the start of the race
as it was hard to get the front working properly
with the wing damaged, but we made some changes
and at the end of the race the car was really
flying. I think we made the right decisions
today; if you told us we could finish third and
fourth at the beginning of the weekend we’d have
taken it.”
Eric Boullier, Team Principal
"It’s a very strong result and it’s a great
reward for the team today. I think we can expect
a stronger season than we had last year and we
need to carry on scoring points as we have in
the last two races. I’m sure a win could arrive
at some point this season. After qualifying you
build expectations, and we could have expected
after the strong race pace we had in Bahrain
that we could have done the same here, but it
was not the case. A race incident at the start
didn’t help Romain, but the pace of both drivers
at the end of the race illustrated our potential.
Finally, we must say congratulations to the
Williams team for their win, and we hope no-one
was seriously hurt in the post-race incident in
their pits.”
Alan Permane, Director of Trackside
Operations
“Third and fourth is a really good result for
the team and it meant a big points haul here –
more than any other team this weekend – which
helps us to close up hugely on second place in
the standings. Of course, it would have been
nice to have done better, but the key to a
strong championship campaign is consistency and
if we can finish third and fourth in every race
this season we’ll be very happy. We didn’t have
the pace to win today, that much was clear after
the first stints. We tried to push our stints
out and be quick at the end. We were, and it
nearly paid off.”
Ricardo Penteado, Renault Sport F1 Team
Support Leader
“It was a great race with another podium and
fourth position to move us a lot closer to
second in the championship. We introduced new
engines after Friday practice and it went well.
We managed the fuel consumption effectively on
both cars in the race, but in Romain’s we had
some engine air consumption in the middle stint.
Congratulations to Pastor and our Renault
colleagues working at Williams today – a well
deserved win.” |
