The Lotus F1 Team finished twelfth and thirteenth at the Singapore Grand Prix, with Pastor Maldonado just ahead of Romain Grosjean at the end of a long and challenging race around the Marina Bay circuit.
Maldonado was running in the points towards the end of the race but ultimately lost out when Sergio Perez and Kevin Magnussen both passed him, and the Venezuelan could only finish twelfth. Despite missing out on his first point’s finish of the season, he was relatively positive about his race.
“We got the maximum out of our performance today and we had a strong consistent race,” said Maldonado. “I’m pretty happy about this after the issues we had earlier in the weekend. I pitted once more than the others during the safety car period but it didn’t affect my position.
“It was a tough race, especially the last ten laps where the tyres needed a lot of managing, but I think we were able to do a great race today.”
Team-mate Grosjean was unhappy to see the opportunity to score points disappear due to trying to attack the drivers ahead of him too quickly after the safety car when his tyres were too cold, and after then he could not get back into contention, finishing thirteenth.
“It was hot out there; things were looking pretty alright until the safety car, we were fighting for points,” said Grosjean. “Unfortunately, I tried to attack too hard on the restart. I wanted to give it everything and with cold soft tyres after a slow safety car period, it was just too much once at the corner. From then on, I couldn’t pass back up through the field to get points.”
Deputy Team Principal Federico Gastaldi was downbeat after seeing both drivers have the opportunity to score points for the first time since the Monaco Grand Prix in May but ultimately fall short. Despite this, he was happy to see both drivers see the chequered flag after a tough and demanding weekend in Singapore.
“We were very close to scoring points with Pastor and Romain today,” insisted Gastaldi. “Unfortunately we couldn’t convert the potential into reality in the end but the team did a great job to get both cars to finish the race after the difficulties that we had through the course of the weekend. So I’m happy. Not rock and roll, but happy.”
