Pastor Maldonado Equals His Best Race Finish So Far This Season At Ger

Lotus F1® Team driver Pastor Maldonado displayed good progress this weekend, equalling his season-best finish so far, during the 10th round of the 2014 Grand Prix Championship which took place at Hockenheim’s GP circuit in Germany.

Pastor Maldonado who begun from P18 on super-soft tyres, made slow and steady progress throughout the race. Sticking to a 2-pit stop strategy instead of the anticipated 3-stop, the Venezuelan fought with tenacity, tussling for placement mid-grid. He narrowly missed out on a points finish, slipping two places from P10 in the final laps to finish in P12.

It was a disappointing race however for Lotus F1® Team driver Romain Grosjean who had started in P14 on the soft tyre compound. A slick getaway from lights out saw him make 2 places early on, advancing to P12. However he was later forced to retire when a cooling issue on the E22 robbed him of race pace and called an early end to his assault.

Romain Grosjean DNF E22-03: “We didn’t have an easy start with the soft tyres and I struggled to warm them up after the safety car too, but our overall pace was quite good today. I suffered from a loss of power due to an issue with our cooling system so was asked to switch off the car. It’s such a shame as we were on a different strategy from our rivals so we looked like we could be on course for scoring points. Sometimes that’s how it goes in motor racing.”

Pastor Maldonado DNF E22-01: “It was a tough race from the beginning; the incident in turn one was quite tricky to avoid but then the pace looked consistent. I did my best to manage the tyre degradation, which was quite high, and we were able to do only two stops. Today’s lower temperature helped us there as well. The initial plan included three stops but we had a competitive first stint so we went for plan B which worked well for us today.”

Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal: " There was great evidence of the team’s spirit over the whole weekend in Hockenheim. We lost our suspension system which has meant a new challenge and some long days adapting the car to work in its new configuration. Despite this, we had good race strategies and looked to be managing the tyres well with the pit stop crew making some fantastically fast tyre changes during the course of the race. Pastor drove impeccably all race and was unlucky not to be rewarded with points. Romain drove superbly too, but we weren’t able to give him a reliable car today. We have improvements planned for Budapest and hope to perform much better there. ”

The Hungarian Grand Prix takes place in Budapest on the 27th July.