Sunday: Grosjean secures a new podium for Lotus
Romain Grosjean was the only threat to the two Red Bull drivers and must have made the French smile in front of their televisions. Kimi Räikkönen, on the other hand, made up for his poor qualifying and start to climb back to fifth position after a rather anonymous race.
Romain Grosjean – 3rd: « Today’s race was just super, super good. What a start! It was awesome to overtake both Red Bulls like that, and it’s going to be one of my best memories of the year. The car was fantastic with the first set of tires, and we managed to get away, but the Red Bulls caught up with us later. In the end, we were the only car capable of taming the bull. It was a great home race for my engineer; it was always good to come to Japan, and it was great to be back on the podium. »
Kimi Räikkönen – 5th: « I had a bad start. I spun at the start and lost a few places which wasn’t ideal, but I managed to recover some places a bit later in the race. After the last pit stop, the car was much better. It performed well during the second half of the race and I was very happy with it. It was a pretty normal race, I think. It was difficult to overtake here, so it’s good to have gotten some points. We did what we could. »
