Sunday: Grosjean on the podium, Räikkönen struggles at Lotus

Romain Grosjean – 3rd:

« If you had told me yesterday that I would be on the podium here, I would have told you that you are crazy! From the start of the race, I felt very comfortable with the soft tires, and we seemed in very good shape. Then we switched to the mediums, and the car was really fast. I lost a bit of time behind Gutierrez which might have cost us the battle for the second position, but we managed to come back. When I saw that I was fourth ahead of Massa with 27 laps to go, I knew it would be tight with him as we had to take care of the tires, and then we had an engine problem at the end of the race which made things quite tricky. In the last few laps, Kimi was really struggling with his tires, so I managed to pass him, and fortunately, I had enough pace to keep Felipe behind. Before the race, our best prediction was fourth if we got a very good start and had a perfect race, so it’s an excellent result and a great performance by the team. »

Kimi Räikkönen – 7th:

« We might have run the first twenty laps without brakes because they were massively overheating, so every time I got close to someone, I lost braking. At the end of the race, I didn’t have any tire performance left either, so it was a very disappointing day. I knew the tires would wear out quite quickly, but there wasn’t much to lose between trying to reach the finish and making an additional stop in terms of lost time. In the end, it didn’t work out. »