Spinning wheel

To finish eighth was not, what we were looking for in Canada. But if you start from P12 and gain four places before coming to the chequared flag, you didn¹t waste the whole afternoon for nothing.

Obviously, we would have needed a more normal weekend. It all went wrong on Saturday. The car was OK in the morning practise and we were expecting to fight for a place in the top 5 of the grid.

The issue with the hydraulics gave some signs already on Friday. Then it came back during the qualifying session. The differential was not working properly, and, for sure, that¹s bad with the wheel spin, while you have to get everything together in one lap in Q2.

We tried, but lost a little bit to qualify further, and that was position 12 in the grid. It¹s not as bad as it would have been in Monaco, but close, enough. It¹s a shame to know it now afterwards.

The circuit has the straights, but the DRS zone was not the whole straight. It¹s not a simple place to overtake. That¹s how people were stuck behind the slower car and you just cannot do enough to improve your position.

We raced against Rosberg, and lost the position there with the pit stops. We would have needed to gain 1-2 seconds somewhere to do better after our pit stop. Now we didn¹t have that second and I felt every time somebody came back from the pits, he just got in front of us.

Obviously, that was frustrating to experience, but that¹s how it goes sometimes in racing. It was not our day, that¹s for sure.

After the pit stops I tried a couple of times the overtake Webber, but the Red Bull was extremely quick exiting the corner and I just could not get close enough in that straight.

Well, we finished again and got some valuable points. Although we were not that happy with the race, the team had a real nice time and Romain got a fine podium finish. Obviously, I would have needed to be in Q3, too, to have a chance to get better result, as well.

Now we return to Europe. The car showed the potential is still there. Let¹s wait and see, how the weekend goes in Valencia. We can improve, and that is an encouraging starting point!

Kimi Räikkönen rose from twelfth on the grid to eighth at the chequered flag, helping the team move eleven points ahead of Ferrari in the Constructors’ Championship. Lotus F1 Team have now scored more points from the seven races thus far in 2012 than during the entirety of the 2011 season.

Kimi Räikkönen, P8, E20-03
“The car was a bit better in the race than it was in qualifying. I seemed to get stuck behind people a few times. The DRS zone is not very long, and it’s still a difficult battle if the car ahead of you is also using the DRS. We had a chance to do a bit better, but it didn’t quite all come together today. We scored points again so that’s always a good thing, especially this season. Qualifying yesterday wasn’t perfect so obviously that left us with more work to do. If you start further forward it’s easier to finish higher up the order. We’ll try to achieve that in the next race.”

Eric Boullier, Team Principal
"Today’s result is due to very good team work and keeping focused on the task at hand. The E20 was very well setup for the race, our strategies worked for both cars to finish much higher than they started and both drivers drove superbly. Romain drove an excellent race and P2 is superb for the whole team, especially everyone at Enstone who keeps pushing to develop every area of the car. We know that if we can get more in qualifying we will be able to achieve even better things in the races, so that is our task ahead.”

Alan Permane, Director of Trackside Operations
“Today all went very much to plan. Coming into the race we were fairly confident that we could do a one stop strategy; it would be a bit tight on the tyres, but it was clear from Friday that the tyres had the pace and the durability to do one stop. Today was a lot hotter, and we had a fall back of a two stop strategy, which we didn’t need. Romain did everything he needed today and it’s a well deserved result. For Kimi we used the opposite tyre strategy from Romain by starting him on the soft tyre and it worked for him to finish four places higher than he started in what was a very competitive race. It’s two very solid drives we’ve had today so we’re very happy to bounce back from Monaco in emphatic fashion.”

Ricardo Penteado, Renault Sport F1 Team Support Leader
“A fantastic double points finish for the team with a career-best result for Romain. It was not an easy race as fuel consumption was difficult to gauge on Friday, but we took a risk to go very aggressive and it was the right choice: Romain’s pace in the last few laps was impressive. Congratulations to all as the result moves us ahead of Ferrari in the championship now.”

Kimi Räikkönen suffered a hydraulic issue which prevented him from climbing higher than twelfth during qualifying for tomorrow’s Canadian Grand Prix.

Kimi Räikkönen, E20-03. Q: P12, 1:14.734. FP3: P9, 1:14.997
“Obviously it’s disappointing to go out in Q2 but we had some issues with the differential which meant the car wasn’t handling as it should. When the grid is so tight it makes a big difference not having the car exactly as you like it. Still, we had no issues on the long runs yesterday, we have options to choose from with the tyres, and the warmer weather is definitely suiting us better so hopefully we can put everything right before tomorrow and go from there. The race is where it counts, so let’s see what we can do.”

Alan Permane, Director of Trackside Operations:
“Good, but not great...”

How do you assess today’s qualifying performance?
“We had a problem with the hydraulics on Kimi’s car in the session which meant the differential was not working properly, so he did a good job to qualify where he did. Romain went through to the final qualifying session comfortably and then did a really good first timed lap in that session on scrubbed tyres. The new tyres didn’t give him the grip and confidence he expected and his lap on these wasn’t any faster. It’s unusual that we would have a warm-up issue here in these conditions, but we’ll be looking at everything to understand what happened.”

How difficult has it been to read the track here?
“The track was very dirty after yesterday’s rain so we saw a lot of evolution today, though it wasn’t particularly tricky to predict. Having said that we’ve had a little bit more trouble than usual setting the cars up; just finding the right balance with the heavy breaking here, making it comfortable enough into the corner and not having too much understeer mid-corner. Certainly with Romain it’s fair to say that he’s not as comfortable as he normally is with his car”

Could Kimi’s hydraulic problem in qualifying carry over into the race?
“I have no doubt that we’ll resolve Kimi’s issue for tomorrow. We can see the symptoms clearly on the data and we recognised it very early on. We informed Kimi that there was a problem during qualifying. It wasn’t something we could easily remedy during the session but I’m very confident that we’ll find the problem overnight and fix it.”

What are the strategy considerations for tomorrow?
“In terms of strategy we’ll be assessing different options. Tyre degradation is very low here, so we could see a few teams attempt a one stop race. Overtaking is very much possible here with the long straights and the DRS; it won’t be easy by any means but certainly simpler than in Monaco.”