Friday: Lotus aims to catch up with Red Bull
After an initial session during which the two Lotus drivers didn't do much driving, Romain Grosjean and Kimi Räikkönen set the 3rd and 6th fastest times and aim to get closer to Red Bull in terms of lap performance.
Kimi Räikkönen – 21st and 6th:
« I felt good today and the car was good. It could have been a bit better, but it wasn’t a disaster, even though it’s clear we can improve for tomorrow. The weather wasn’t good this morning, and it’s much better for us when it’s dry. We had a small problem with the front end during the first session, which resulted in us not running as much as we wanted. The afternoon was quite normal. Of course, it seems like it’s going to be a tough weekend to beat Red Bull, but that’s what we have to try to do to catch up with them in the championship. »
Romain Grosjean – 22nd and 3rd:
« It was a busy day. We had planned to focus on evaluating our system this morning, but with the weather changes, it wasn’t possible to do 100% of the tests, so with the rain, we decided to postpone that for the afternoon to focus on a normal program with long stints. It wasn’t easy because we struggled a bit to get the tires to work the way we wanted, which means that in the car, the feeling might not be good, but the times were still good. The car is quite good and we are going to work from this base to continue improving. We will wait to see what the weather has in store for us. »
