Romain Grosjean Delivers For The Lotus F1® Team In His 50Th Grand Prix

Lotus F1® Team driver Romain Grosjean, drives the team into its first points finish of the 2014 F1® season, whilst teammate Pastor Maldonado climbs 7 places up the grid, to finish in P15.

Celebrating his 50th Grand Prix race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Cataluñya, for the Spanish Grand Prix, Lotus F1® Team driver, Romain Grosjean claimed vital first season points which had previously eluded the Lotus F1® Team. A superb, yet taut qualifying saw the Frenchman begin from P5, the highest grand prix start of the season, whereas stablemate Pastor Maldonado kept his head up, disappointed at having to start from the back of the pack in P22, thanks to a run-off in Q1.

During the 66-laps of the race however, both drivers delivered for the team. Romain held onto his P5 slot for as long as possible keeping his adversaries in his rear view. Power unit issues mid-race however meant he slipped from P5 but still maintained a top ten position to finally take the flag in P8. Pastor on the other hand was consistently climbing but unfortunately got slapped early on with a 5-second stop/go penalty. Never-the-less he recovered quickly to advance some 7 places, coming home in P15.

Romain Grosjean P8 E22-03: “It’s been a tough battle for us to get points this season and that was certainly one of the hardest races I’ve contested in a long time. I did everything I could to drive around the power unit issues, which really made things difficult when battling the other cars. It’s good for all the crew at the track and at Enstone to finally get a reward for all their hard work. There are still a lot of areas where we can improve and certainly the car wasn’t as quick today as it was yesterday, with the different track conditions as well as the other issue. It’s Mothers’ Day in Switzerland so this one’s for my mum!"

Pastor Maldonado P15 E22-01: “We made a step forward in terms of pace with the car this weekend, it was much more competitive than 15th but the lack of top speed meant we weren’t able to attack even if we had a quicker car than others around us. We need to keep working on that and to be faster on the straights. Today’s result is a bit disappointing but my race had been already compromised by starting at the back the grid. At least we saw the chequered flag and collected more data for the team to keep on developing the car."

Frederico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal: "We are very pleased for the team and for Romain to have scored our first points today. It’s certainly been a long road to get to this place. It’s not all a sweet taste as we were expecting to have finished further up the grid. We had some issues with the power unit again so we need to keep working with Renault Sport F1 to ensure we can keep fighting for as many points as possible. We have two days of testing coming up and our target is to carry on making improvements in performance and reliability.”

Now as we continue into the European leg of the season, the team prepare for the following round of the competition that takes place in Monaco on the 25th May 2014.