The Lotus F1 team have been on the back foot all season long, and started the first grand prix in Australia right at the back. Since then they’ve made steady progress, and Romain Grosjean took his car to fifth place on the grid in Spain. Unfortunately, despite being quick all weekend, Pastor Maldonado will start last after crashing during qualifying.
After ending the 2013 season strongly, Grosjean is continuing to impress despite not being in such a good car as last year, but he was very happy to qualify fifth, and believes there is still more to come from the car.
“It’s very positive for everybody in the team to be on the third row of the grid,” said Grosjean. “It’s where we want to be and there is certainly more to come.
“We have been working hard and had good updates here and found some ways to continue to improve the car and make it work better. We found some more performance and today we had a good qualifying session.”
For Maldonado however, it will be a long race starting from the back after spinning into the barriers exiting turn three during the first part of qualifying. The Venezuelan, who won this race for Williams back in 2012, felt he could have been up with his team-mate in qualifying, and thus felt encouraged about the teams’ progress.
“The car is working much better, especially here on this track,” said Maldonado. “We have definitely made a step forward. With entire the package put together we can see a positive improvement this weekend. The long run we did yesterday looked quite good and consistent. I think that we now have a car that whatever the conditions we can move into the top ten, fighting from P3 to P10.”
“I will do my best in the race, as always. If everything runs like planned, then we can fight for points.”
