Sunday: Räikkönen saves the day, D’Ambrosio loses his KERS
With its long straights, Monza was not expected to be the playground of choice for the Lotus E20. Nevertheless, the English team salvages the situation with Kimi Räikkönen's 5th place, while Jérôme D'Ambrosio was hindered by a KERS failure from the first laps of the race.
Kimi Räikkönen – 5th:
« It’s good to be third in the driver standings, but we lost some points to Fernando, which is not ideal. It was a tough weekend because we were too slow on the straights, which made it very difficult to keep others behind, and even with DRS, it was complicated to overtake the cars in front. We made only one pit stop, and the tires were good. We started the race aiming for 6th or 7th position, so 5th is the maximum we could achieve here this weekend. »
Jérôme D’Ambrosio – 13th:
« It was a long and difficult race for me today. After losing my KERS on the sixth lap, it became complicated and cost me about half a second per lap. I had a good start and was fighting with Daniel [Ricciardo] and Nico [Rosberg], but once I lost that extra boost, it was impossible to keep up.
My last stint on medium tires with a clear track was pretty good and I didn’t make any mistakes, so maybe with a bit more luck we could have achieved a better result. My main goal was to finish the race and I managed to do that, so it’s not so bad. It was great to be back in the car, especially with such a fantastic team, and I learned a lot from this weekend.
