Someone Pass Us The Maple Syrup

The Lotus F1® Team suffered disappointment over the weekend in an unfulfilling Canadian GP that saw both Lotus F1® drivers retire from the Montreal race

Despite a heart-warming fight from the Lotus F1® Team, the Canadian 2014 Grand Prix failed to unfold as hoped for by the black and gold troupe with both Lotus F1® Team drivers forced to retire before the end of the 70-lap race.

Pastor began from P17 and despite ascending to P8, he had little choice but to retire in lap 21 when power unit issues proved insurmountable for the Venezuelan. Romain who had begun from P14 fared little better and suffered rear wing damage cutting short his race and he retired in lap 59.

Romain Grosjean DNF E22-03: “Today was not great in terms of pace for me, however there are some positives looking forwards. We can see that a Renault Sport F1 team can win a race so we have a target there, especially when the win came at a circuit that is not thought to be one of the stronger ones for them. Congratulations to Daniel for his win which I watched in the garage. The rear wing of my car broke, so it was safer to retire than risk a potentially dangerous situation. We have a lot of work to do, so it's time to go home and try to understand our problems and come back stronger in the next races."

Pastor Maldonado DNF E22-01: “We had a similar problem to yesterday where we lost a lot of power. It's a shame as the race was going very well, and we had an excellent pace - to be honest I was quite surprised by the car. The strategy was good, as we were looking for one stop whereas all the other cars were planning two stops, so we were looking very strong today and even without stopping we were on a similar pace with the other teams. We just need to look into exactly what happened and work hard to fix the problems we are having. We’ve shown we can be competitive."

Federico Gastaldi, Deputy Team Principal: "Today saw a great Formula 1 race and we must say congratulations to Daniel Ricciardo for his first win. For us, it was certainly not our finest moment. Pastor was driving very strongly with a good strategy which should have seen him finish strongly in the points. He had an issue related to his power unit from the start of the race and eventually he had to retire because of this. This is frustrating for all involved and we will do everything we can to eradicate issues like this in the future. Romain had a tough race where he pushed all the way, but there was a problem with his rear wing. Again, not ideal and something we need to understand and rectify. We have a busy few weeks before Austria.”

The team now look forward to the next round of the competition that takes place in Austria on 22nd June.