Lotus team boss Eric Boullier concedes that the team didn’t expect to be in a position to win in Australia.

The car had looked good in testing, but a compromised qualifying session appeared to have cost Kimi Raikkonen any shot at victory.

“We weren’t expecting a win,” Boullier told SPEED.com. “We were pretty confident that we could fight for the podium, but to win is great. At least it’s done now, not like last year – when do you win, when do you win? Now we can concentrate on the championship.

“We knew the car was good on tires, which was the purpose of the design of the car, but from that point, we didn’t know what to expect.”

Boullier says that while Raikkonen’s rise from seventh was impressive, his grid position was not representative, and it would be wrong to draw any conclusions about the car’s merits over one lap.

“We were not in the right position on the grid,” Boullier said. “We could have qualified higher on the grid, definitely, but we did small mistakes in the qualy, not enough track time, let’s say, to exploit the tires, but it doesn’t matter because in the end we could recover in the race.

read more