Race - Monaco GP report: Lotus Renault

Romain Grosjean took the chequered flag for his first time in the Monaco Grand Prix with a gritty drive to eighth in the final classification. Romain was hit from behind on the first lap, damaging a wheel rim which necessitated an early pit stop, but gradually worked his way up the order and into the points. Pastor Maldonado experienced a fuel supply issue with his E22 on the grid and was unable to make the race start.

— Romain started from fourteenth position on new super soft tyres, changing to new softs on lap 1 then scrubbed super softs on lap 23.
— Pastor was due to start from fifteenth on the grid but a fuel pump issue meant he was unable to commence the formation lap.

Romain Grosjean

“It’s good to finish the race here for the first time in my career and it’s good to get some points too. It started as a pretty bad Sunday for us with a puncture for me on the first lap after Adrian [Sutil] drove into me. We swapped to the soft tyres but it was impossible to overtake on these so we came back in for the super softs. The safety car timing didn’t help us as we’d just gone out on the new tyres, but that’s Monaco. You can have thousands of misfortunes in the race, but still be in the points at the end!"

Pastor Maldonado

“We don’t know yet precisely what happened. The engine switched off after 30 seconds. When we did out laps to the grid the car and the power unit were working well. We need to work to find out what the problem was. It is disappointing and I was expecting a solid race, we had a good strategy in place, I love this circuit where I have been competitive in the past. We have already worked hard on performance and reliability but today it was not to be. This afternoon we’re not happy but we are keeping focused on improving."

Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal

"We scored some lucky points today but our overall weekend has been disappointing. It’s been very frustrating that Pastor couldn’t start the race and we have to identify the cause of this. Romain stayed focused and did a very good job to score the team some valuable points. We know that we still have work to do and Monaco certainly hasn’t played to our strengths.”

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director

"It has been a disappointing weekend for us. Pastor’s car didn’t make it to the start of the race because of what looks like a fuel pump problem. Romain was hit from behind the first lap and got a puncture so we had to pit him early unfortunately. From then on, it was a long afternoon at the back of the field and in the end we were lucky with retirements and managed to score four points for an eighth place finish. We now look ahead to the next race and will work hard to correct issues we have seen here this weekend to get back up to an acceptable level of performance.”

Simon Rebreyend, Renault Sport F1 track support leader

“Scoring points after a puncture on the first lap that dropped him to 19this a fantastic result for Romain; he kept focused and cautious with all the accidents and safety cars to come home eighth. For Pastor it was the opposite as he could not take the start. On the grid the team saw the fuel pressure dropping and on further investigation discovered an issue with the fuel pump. We are still unclear what happened but will look at everything in detail before Canada.”