Friday: Maldonado “a bit optimistic” during his crash at Lotus
The day was paradoxical for Lotus: while the car seemed more performant, especially in the hands of Romain Grosjean during the second free practice session, on Pastor Maldonado's side, errors multiplied until his final off-track excursion.
Romain Grosjean (No. 8) – 12th and 9th
The Frenchman’s day was good, and the Lotus seemed less adrift than in the previous Grand Prix in Bahrain: Everything seemed to work a little better today, and everyone is working hard on both the chassis and the engine block. He is satisfied with the running and the work done, especially in terms of development: We managed to do a lot of laps and understand as much as we could about the E22. We also evaluated a reasonable number of different parts for the car and settings for the engine block.
The driver with number 8 even starts dreaming of a Q3 during the qualifications: « There are always areas we need to understand better and improve. For tomorrow, we’ll see what we can do, and obviously, it would be wonderful to be able to qualify in the top 10. »
Pastor Maldonado (No. 13) – 16th and 18th
The Venezuelan was the main instigator of the day with an off-track excursion during FP2: “It was my fault,” he admitted. “I was a bit optimistic at the pit entry and the run-off area is quite small, but that’s the way it is. It’s a tricky part of the track and we’ve already had incidents there.”
He mainly wants to focus on the positive: « We had good FP1 and managed to test some things in FP2, which means we have good data. We tried different settings on the car and completely different philosophies, so now we have a lot of data to analyze for tomorrow. »
He also notes progress and believes that points are a realistic goal: « The car is improving: the hybrid engine block seems to be better and more consistent. Our qualifying setup is better, we’re working on it, so I hope this weekend will be better for us. Scoring points is realistic, so we will do our best to achieve it. »
