Qualifying - Russian GP report: Lotus Mercedes

Romain Grosjean has qualified eighth and Pastor Maldonado fourteenth for tomorrow’s Russian Grand Prix. Pastor missed going through into the top ten decider whilst Romain proceeded without hitch.

Romain Grosjean

“It was a pretty good qualifying session for us. We knew the top ten was achievable if everything went right. It was quite a challenging day as we didn’t have so much data to work from so we had to make a few choices during qualifying, but it all seemed to work quite well for us. I’m happy with P8 and I think good things are possible in the race. I was glad to hear that Carlos had the thumbs-up after his accident.”

Pastor Maldonado

“For FP3 we had a better feeling with the car so we need to investigate to see why we couldn’t get the speed from the super soft tyres when we needed it. The car didn’t feel too bad, it just wasn’t quick enough when we wanted it. We all expected more from today. The main thing is that Carlos is okay after his incident earlier.”

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director

How was qualifying for the team?

Mixed. We saw a strong effort from Romain who is well placed for a decent result from P8 on the grid tomorrow whilst Pastor struggled for pace when he needed it, despite being quick in FP3. We’ve got more of a challenge from P14 on the grid so we’ll be considering all the strategic permutations for the race as well as searching for the pace lost in qualifying.

What are the considerations for tomorrow’s race?

For a number of reasons we’ve seen pretty limited running in the build-up to the race so we don’t have the same breadth of data that we usually would have relating to tyre performance. This means there are rather more unknowns than usual so we’ll all be very alert to how the race unfolds.