After a disappointing qualifying for Lotus F1 Team at the Brazilian Grand Prix on Saturday, with Romain Grosjean starting from fourteenth and Pastor Maldonado fifteenth, it was a much better race for the Enstone team.
Grosjean came out with some good overtaking manoeuvres on other drivers which allowed him to finish within the points for Lotus in ninth. With Williams driver Felipe Massa being disqualified from the Grand Prix due to exceeding the revised temperature parameters for tyres, Grosjean was promoted to eighth, and admitted it had been an emotional weekend with what tragic happenings had occurred back in his homeland.
“It was a fun race,” said Grosjean. “I enjoyed going through the field with some nice overtaking manoeuvres with our aggressive race strategy. It was quite hard to follow the cars but we had good power to overtake into turn 1.
“It has been an emotional weekend so it is good to be back in the points. The next race will be my last one with the team and taking the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi will be very special but I will give my best to bring a good result.”
Maldonado looked like he would be within the points but after receiving a five-second penalty for contact with Marcus Ericsson heading into turn one, he dropped out of the top ten. But with Massa’s disqualification, Maldonado was promoted back into tenth.
“It was a very active race with lots going on,” said Maldonado. “We used a different strategy to most by running with the slower but more durable tyre for the first stint, when it was difficult to make progress against those on the softs.
“That meant when we changed to the softs we could push harder in the middle stint and make some good places. Then at the end we were defending with harder tyres from those with softer and fresher ones so it was difficult to keep P10, but from where we started it was a good race.”