(© Ben Johnston 2015)
The Lotus F1 Team have told their drivers Romain Grosjean
and Pastor Maldonado that they never want what happened in Sunday’s Spanish
Grand Prix to repeat itself in the future.
The team-mate’s touched wheels at T3 during Sunday’s race in
an incident reminiscent of Grosjean’s clash with then team mate Kimi Raikkonen
at the Hungarian Grand Prix a few seasons back. In that incident however
neither car sustained damage.
In Sunday’s race however, Pastor Maldonado’s car was damaged
in the impact and although the team removed the piece of bodywork that was
damaged on his car, it was decided that the best thing to do was to retire the Venezuelan
from the race. Romain Grosjean went on to finish the race in the points in
eighth place.
Despite the incident, the Enstone outfit have refused to
blame either driver for what happened. Speaking following the race, Lotus F1
Team’s Technical Director Nick Chester commented by saying:
‘That was an eventful race for us. It was a good
result for Romain with another four points in the bag despite an issue with the
gearbox which he managed well. Pastor was looking quick but we had to pit him
to remove some damaged bodywork. The extra stop proved too much of a penalty as
despite him setting strong lap times, we weren’t able to work back up the order
so we retired the car to avoid any additional damage.’
Deputy Team Principal at Lotus, Frederico Gastaldi commented
after the race saying:
‘Both our drivers put in really strong
performances today, with Romain finishing in eighth despite a gearbox issue and
Pastor driving relentlessly before we retired him, but the real heroes today
were the pit crew. Our pit box proved slippery causing Romain to stop long,
resulting in three of the crew being slightly worse for wear, but nevertheless
they were back in action for the subsequent stops. This is another endorsement
of Enstone’s never give up spirit and we know the guys will be fighting fit for
Monaco.’
© Ben Johnston 2015
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