Saturday: Lotus is ideally placed
Romain Grosjean, third, managed to outperform his teammate Kimi Räikkönen, who came sixth. Both drivers are therefore ideally positioned to deliver a great race and score big points. Victory does not seem out of reach...
Romain Grosjean – 1st and 3rd:
Until now, it has been a great weekend with a consistently performing car. The best time in the free session this morning was a good sign and the car responded perfectly to all phases of qualifying. Lewis achieved a very fast lap, but I’m not too far from Sebastian [Vettel] and anything can happen in the race depending on tire behavior. I think it will be very open tomorrow. Many things will depend on strategy, traffic, and so on. If we manage to get everything in order, there will be strong possibilities of achieving a great result.
Kimi Räikkönen – 11th and 6th:
The weekend hasn’t been the easiest for me so far. Perhaps the new tires are a bit different, especially at the front, so it’s been difficult to find the right setup. We are getting there little by little, the car was really better in qualifying than at the start of the weekend. Obviously, 6th position isn’t ideal, but it’s better than other qualifying sessions earlier in the season. So we’ll try to do better tomorrow. It’s not easy to overtake here, but we’ve seen in recent years that by managing the tires well, it was possible to gain back quite a few places. So we’ll see what we can do.
