Q&A with Jean Alesi, Group Lotus ambassador

Group Lotus ambassador Jean Alesi shares his thoughts on the action packed German Grand Prix….

Did that race have you on the edge of your seat, Jean?

Yes, all the way to the finish! From the first lap to the last, the German Grand Prix was tense and unpredictable. It was so close and it wasn’t clear until the last few laps that Lewis Hamilton was going to win. It was a great race.



Lotus Renault GP picked up a point at the Nurburgring, with Vitaly Petrov’s 10th place finish. But the team does seem to be struggling for position in the mid-field, is this a cause for concern?



The team is working really hard to find solutions, but we all want to see better results and we have bigger ambitions than 10th place. Yes, it’s a championship point, and we can be proud to have scored points at every race this year, but we can do much better. The team is working on updates that should be on the car in Hungary next weekend, and I really hope these work so we can reign in Mercedes and overtake them again in the championship. We also need to understand why Force India was faster this weekend, because we should really be ahead of them.



Nick Heidfeld had a fairly dramatic crash when Sebastian Buemi pushed him off the track at the chicane on Lap 10. Nick was just a passenger, wasn’t he?

It was pretty spectacular on TV and we’re lucky Nick wasn’t harmed. It’s not the most comfortable feeling flying through the air like that but thankfully there was a lot of gravel run-off and it did its job. Buemi should have seen Nick. He gave him nowhere to go. Without doubt, Nick was an innocent victim there.



Vitaly gave a gritty performance. What did you make of his defensive driving against the likes of Jenson Button and Michael Schumacher?



Vitaly is proving to be a great fighter who doesn’t give up. He can make his car very wide, but he also drives in a fair way, so I think he did well to stay ahead as long as he did and probably made the most of his opportunities today.



The cold track temperatures at the Nurburgring seemed to suit McLaren and Ferrari better than Red Bull and Lotus Renault. Will Red Bull be back on top in Hungary, and will these conditions suit LRGP ?



I think something’s changed, not for Red Bull but for Ferrari and McLaren. They’ve made a jump forward and now RBR need to catch up again. The temperatures this weekend didn’t seem too bothersome for LRGP, who qualified reasonably well in ninth and 11th. I think it’s just clear we’ve lost some ground to our competitors and we need to get some new performance boosting parts on the car quickly so we can fight.