(Glenn Dunbar for Lotus F1 Team)
The Lotus F1 Team had a mixed weekend at the German Grand Prix in Hockenheim. Fresh from the news that his contract has been renewed for next season Pastor Maldonado did a fantastic job to make his way from 18th on the grid to finish the race in 12th place albeit one lap down from race winner Nico Rosberg. However the Venezuelan showed yesterday that the Enstone based outfit have certainly made progress.
Romain Grosjean was left disappointed after retiring from the race with a cooling issue related to his E22's power unit. The Frenchman had been doing a great job and he did a great well in qualifying as he started the race from 14th place on the grid.
Following the race Grosjean said:
'Our overall pace was quite good today, I suffered from a loss of power due to an issue with our cooling system so I was asked to switch off the car. It’s such a shame as we were on a different strategy from our rivals so we looked like we could be on course for scoring points.'
Maldonado matched his best finish and commented after the race:
'It was a tough race from the beginning; the incident in turn one was quite tricky to avoid but then the pace looked consistent, I did my best to manage the tyre degradation, which was quite high, and we were able to do only two stops. Today’s lower temperature helped us there as well. The initial plan included three stops but we had a competitive first stint so we went for plan B which worked well for us today.'
Deputy team principal Frederico Gastaldi was delighted with the spirit shown by the team saying:
'There was great evidence of the team’s spirit over the whole weekend in Hockenheim. We had good race strategies and looked to be managing the tyres well with the pit stop crew making some fantastically fast tyre changes during the course of the race.'
The Enstone based outfit now head to the Hungarian Grand Prix this weekend where last season they finished the race in 2nd place for Kimi Raikkonen and 6th place for Romain Grosjean and with the improved race pace shown by the team at the weekend they will be hoping that they will be in a position to challenge for more points finishes this weekend.
© Ben Johnston 2014
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