Kimi on P6; Mixed day for Lotus
Silverstone (UK), 7 July 2012: While Lotus have looked on the pace this weekend, qualifying problems leave them starting sixth and ninth for the British Grand Prix here on Sunday.
Kimi Räikkönen qualified sixth, and was to a small extent helped by the conditions which limited the damage done by him having a KERS failure as qualifying began. Romain Grosjean, however, never got to show his potential in Q3. Having made it through the truncated Q2 with good pace, the Frenchman spun off towards the end of that session and was unable to participate in Q3 with his car being recovered to the pits. He therefore qualified tenth but will start ninth after Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg took a gearbox penalty, according to a Press Release from FIA.
“We’re in sixth place which is certainly not a disaster but we could have done better,” concluded Räikkönen. “We made a slightly wrong decision by using the full wet [in Q3] and I only had one lap in the restarted final qualifying session with the intermediates, otherwise I think it was possible to have gone faster. The weather makes it a bit tricky for everybody. It’s not easy, especially with the spray and this is even more difficult in race conditions when everyone is fighting for the same piece of track. On the plus side for the fans, it’s good fun to watch, even if it’s not the nicest weather if you’re in a grandstand.”
Alan Permane, Lotus’s director of trackside operations conceded that, given the conditions, the tyre choice was a biggest issue than the KERS for Räikkönen. “In the wet conditions we experienced, the lack of KERS would have cost him a couple of tenths. With the KERS functioning it could have been possible to be a position further forwards on the grid. That said, being on the correct tyres and crossing the line to be the last driver on a flying lap would have yielded far more time. We took advantage of the rain delay to change everything we could to rectify the KERS issue, but were unable to do so in the time available. We don’t expect it to be an issue in tomorrow’s race.”
Grosjean’s self-inflicted problem was easier to diagnose. “It’s frustrating and I’m very sorry for the team as it looks like we had a strong car, but sometimes mistakes happen,” he said. “My lap was not much different from the previous lap but it was different enough for me to go off and the car went backwards into the gravel and then it was stranded. It was very slippery. We deserved better, but we will do our best tomorrow to gain positions to get some good points. It will be a long race and starting position doesn’t mean as much if there are variable conditions. There’s also a benefit from not making it into Q3 as I have a fresh set of intermediate tyres.“
ends
