The French are smiling after the qualifications

Romain Grosjean thinks that the front row was within his reach.

As Motors Inside announced this morning on its Twitter account, Eric Boullier predicted that the Lotus cars should be between 3rd and 6th place in qualifying. Mission accomplished for Romain Grosjean and Kimi Räikkönen, who are respectively 4th and 5th on the grid. However, the French driver thinks that it was possible to do a little better. He stated: “It’s not the best we could have hoped for because we had a bit more up our sleeve. We didn’t drive at all this morning, so it’s a good recovery. The car is working well. We lose a bit of time in turn 10, maybe 2 tenths, so we could have been on the front row, but in general, the qualifying is quite good, both cars are there, and tomorrow’s race will be long,” explains the Lotus driver to the French journalists in the Barcelona paddock.

Since the beginning of the season, the race pace of the E20 seems generally better than that of the qualifying, a reason to be optimistic even if tomorrow’s Grand Prix will not be easy: « The Grand Prix is going to be long, »

responds Grosjean. We saw some teams unable to last more than eight laps on the tires, so tomorrow we’ll need to see if we can gain one or two laps per stint. It seems ridiculous and trivial, but it will make a big difference. I think we’ve worked on the car to make it comfortable with the tires. I will also modify my driving style to try to be gentler with the tires and aim to gain those two extra laps that can make the difference. We will try to aim for a podium, that’s for sure, but we’ll have to see because we know the race will be different from the qualifying.

Jean-Eric Vergne: Priority to the race

Just like Grosjean, Jean-Eric Vergne thinks he could have been a bit better placed on the grid but is still satisfied to have outpaced his teammate at the end of this qualifying session: “The position is not yet what I wanted, but I finally did a qualifying lap where I said to myself at the end: ‘That’s a good lap.’ It’s a global thing; I think we’re still lacking a bit of aero. I was blocked quite badly by Paul di Resta in Q3, but I was lucky that Senna went off. Then in Q2, we saved sets of new tires.”

Based on a better race pace than the one shown on Saturday afternoon, JEV hopes to cross the finish line in the top 10 tomorrow at the end of the Grand Prix: « We’re going to try to score points. The start will be important, then tire management. If we look at Vettel, I don’t know exactly what happened to him but I suppose he preserved his tires, and if he’s doing that, there’s a reason and we can expect significant degradation in the race, » predicts Vergne.

Charles Pic is ahead of Timo Glock.

For Charles Pic, returning to Europe also means racing on circuits he knows well, unlike those in Australia, Malaysia, or China. This return seems to be suiting him quite well as he is ahead of Glock by half a second: « It’s good, I prefer that to the opposite, but my main objective is to improve in every race and to be in front if I have the opportunity. I am still in a learning phase since it’s only my fifth race. Now, it’s certain that the more races pass, the better I feel. The further we advance in the season, the harder it will get because all the easy things are learned at the beginning and then it comes down to details, » analyzes Pic in the paddock of the Circuit de Catalunya.

From our journalist in Barcelona