Indian GP: Lotus Sunday quotes
Kimi Raikkonen - 7th: "I had a very good car today but I just couldn't do anything with it as I was not able to pass on the straight. It was quite disappointing but that's how it goes. We put ourselves in that position yesterday with the set-up we chose for qualifying and we paid the price today. We had the speed but not in the right place and when you are behind someone there's not much you can do. Hopefully in the next race we can be a bit more smart and use our race speed to take some more Championship points."
Romain Grosjean - 9th: "Finishing 9th after starting from 12th is good but we could have done even better. That said, I think it was a very good race from myself, my engineers, and the crew during the pit stops. We did everything we could; everybody was working at 100% but today we were lacking some speed in a straight line which makes it impossible to overtake. I pushed on every lap - it was like 90 minutes of qualifying - and gave everything to get the best performance from the car, so I'm very happy."
Eric Boullier, Team Principal: "Like every race, qualifying is obviously the key to get good points so yesterday's performance defined our race. Unfortunately Kimi was unable to overtake Felipe and stayed stuck behind. I think we had the pace to be a little bit better and get nearer the front. We clearly need to work on qualifying and make sure we do a better job. We know our car is strong in the race and I think both drivers today did the job we were expecting. The team did a great job on the pit stop strategy so we cannot complain. Let's just say we're frustrated that we didn't do a little bit better."
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: "Both drivers reported that their cars were excellent during the race, which was good. The downside was that Kimi spent the whole race looking at the back of Massa's car and Romain was held up for around four laps whilst Michael (Schumacher) received blue flags ahead of him. This circuit is pretty difficult to overtake on; even though there's a very long straight, the DRS zone isn't actually that long. It was clear we were definitely faster than the cars ahead, just not sufficiently faster to overtake."
Ricardo Penteado, Renault Sport F1 Team Support Leader: "A double points finish is a good result today. We worked very hard with the team to optimise the Coanda exhaust system and we have made some good progress in this area. In this respect it's been a very positive weekend and we hope to build on this momentum in a week's time in Abu Dhabi."
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
How BRM’s engine overreach hindered a pioneering F1 Lotus
Indy 500 retrospective: When Jones beat Clark and paused a revolution
How Senna’s first F1 winner gave Lotus life after Chapman
FIA still chasing answers over bizarre Shanghai F1 grass fires
How a Shanghai to Sheffield journey paved the way for China’s F1 hero
Hamilton expects to lose positions if F1 China sprint is dry
Verstappen 'deserves' fourth in China F1 sprint qualifying with wet struggles
How a Shanghai to Sheffield journey paved the way for China’s F1 hero
Why F1 2026 worst case fears could be key to new rules success
How the F1 driver market situation sits for each team with 2025 openings
What's been going wrong for Leclerc in F1's tiny margins qualifying game
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments