Friday: Still work to be done for Lotus
The two Lotus team drivers, Kimi Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean, are pleased with this first day of testing. But they know they will have to work with their engineers to improve the performance of the Lotus E20 if they want to achieve a good result on Sunday in the race.
Kimi Räikkönen – 24th and 13th
« It’s not often that you have a perfect single-seater on Friday, and there are several things we need to improve. To be honest, it doesn’t matter if you’re the slowest single-seater on Friday if you’re the fastest for the rest of the weekend. We just need to study the data now and make the usual adjustments to improve the single-seater.
We hope for better results than those achieved during the last two weekends. But it is clear that there is still work to be done on the car. We tried several settings today, so we have data to study, and we know that there are several areas where we need to improve.
Romain Grosjean – 17th and 15th
We had strange conditions this morning and a somewhat difficult session this afternoon, to be honest. We are not where we hoped to be, partly because the temperatures are lower than expected. We need to analyze what changed after two weekends with higher temperatures compared to here because it has changed things.
The positive point is that I’m comfortable with the way the car behaves; we had some issues with the settings but it’s not like the car is nowhere. I’m convinced that we will improve tomorrow, and obviously, if the weather changes again, everything will change.
It’s never easy to learn a new track in changing conditions, but it was good to ride and find my pace, and I also have a good idea of the behavior of the intermediate tires which is a bonus for me. The circuit itself is fun to drive, and I was pleased to be close to Kimi who has much more experience than me here. I will work late with my engineers today.
