Friday: Grosjean is searching, Räikkönen crashes at Lotus
For the Lotus team, Friday could have gone better: Kimi Räikkönen crashed during the first practice session but was still able to complete his program. For Romain Grosjean, the setup was tricky, but a good result remains possible.
Romain Grosjean – 7th and 6th
My first two stints this morning weren’t perfect, so we decided to change some things during the break, but that didn’t really work either. Finding the right balance over a full lap here is quite challenging because the different sectors are quite unique compared to each other, but eventually, we returned to a more conventional setup for a stint on super-soft tires, and the car felt much better. Hopefully, track evolution will bring us a bit further forward tomorrow. Half a second off the leaders is a big gap, and they seem very fast, so I think the top 5 is a realistic goal in qualifying, but obviously, we’ll do our best to catch up with them.
Kimi Räikkönen – 8th and 8th
« Obviously, it didn’t help that I partially destroyed the car this morning; maybe I’m running out of talent here! It didn’t cause too much damage and the car was fine for free practice 2, even though the guys had little time to repair it. They did a great job and we managed to do everything we wanted today. The car seems quite strong – especially on long runs – so that’s good news for the race. On the short runs, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but we’ll still have time to make progress. »
