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Lotus F1® Team driver Romain
Grosjean drives the team into its first points
finish of the 2014 F1® season, whilst teammate
Pastor Maldonado climbs 7 places up the grid, to
finish in P15.
Celebrating his 50th Grand Prix race at the
Circuit de Barcelona-Cataluñya, for the Spanish
Grand Prix, Lotus F1® Team driver, Romain
Grosjean claimed vital first season points which
had previously eluded the Lotus F1® Team. A
superb, yet taut qualifying session resulted in
the Frenchman beginning the race from P5, the
highest grand prix start of the season.
Stablemate Pastor Maldonado, on the other hand,
kept his head up, disappointed at having to
start from the back of the pack in P22, thanks
to a run-off in Q1.
During the 66-lap race however, both drivers
delivered for the team. Romain held onto his P5
slot for as long as possible keeping his
adversaries in his rear view. Power unit issues
mid-race however meant he slipped from P5 but
still maintained a top ten position to finally
take the flag in P8. Pastor on the other hand
was consistently climbing but unfortunately got
slapped early on with a 5-second stop/go
penalty. Never-the-less he recovered quickly to
advance some 7 places, coming home in P15.
Romain Grosjean P8 E22-03: “It’s been a
tough battle for us to get points this season
and that was certainly one of the hardest races
I’ve contested in a long time. I did everything
I could to drive around the power unit issues,
which really made things difficult when battling
the other cars. It’s good for all the crew at
the track and at Enstone to finally get a reward
for all their hard work. There are still a lot
of areas where we can improve and certainly the
car wasn’t as quick today as it was yesterday,
with the different track conditions as well as
the other issue. It’s Mothers’ Day in
Switzerland so this one’s for my mum!"
Pastor Maldonado P15 E22-01: “We made a
step forward in terms of pace with the car this
weekend, it was much more competitive than 15th
but the lack of top speed meant we weren’t able
to attack even if we had a quicker car than
others around us. We need to keep working on
that and to be faster on the straights. Today’s
result is a bit disappointing but my race had
been already compromised by starting at the back
the grid. At least we saw the chequered flag and
collected more data for the team to keep on
developing the car."
Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal:
"We are very pleased for the team and for Romain
to have scored our first points today. It’s
certainly been a long road to get to this place.
It’s not all a sweet taste as we were expecting
to have finished further up the grid. We had
some issues with the power unit again so we need
to keep working with Renault Sport F1 to ensure
we can keep fighting for as many points as
possible. We have two days of testing coming up
and our target is to carry on making
improvements in performance and reliability.”
Now as we continue into the European leg of the
season, the team prepare for the following round
of the competition that takes place in Monaco on
the 25th May 2014.
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