Sunday: Both Lotus drivers on the podium, thrilled with the tires
After a very strong opening stint, Romain Grosjean managed to put Sebastian Vettel under pressure for about twenty laps. Kimi Räikkönen, on the other hand, pushed the three-time world champion to his limits with a strategically delayed final pit stop. Lotus returns to the podium and is pleased with the new tires provided by Pirelli.
Kimi Räikkönen – 2nd: « We had a very good final stint in the race, but the performance of the cars was quite similar so it was difficult to gain an advantage. Maybe a few extra laps could have helped us, but the race is only 60 laps so we have to do our best in that time. After my first stop, I got stuck behind a Mercedes for a while, but once the car was passed, it was fine. After the safety car, three of us were able to pull away, but our speeds were too close to change the order. It was a good day for the team. Of course, we wanted to win; we couldn’t, but we scored a lot of points here. The higher temperatures definitely helped us, so hopefully, we will have warm weather again in Budapest. »
Romain Grosjean – 3rd: « After several challenging races, everything went well today and it was quite special when I was leading the race, and being back on the podium is naturally great. My car was good during the first stint with the soft tires, and it’s clear that the European summer weather suits us well. Fortunately, we have long summers in Europe! Letting Kimi pass at the end of the race was the right thing to do as we had different strategies and he had a better chance to win than I did at that moment. We didn’t know which type of tires was best at the end of the race, so we didn’t put all our eggs in one basket. »