Saturday: Grosjean places his Lotus behind the McLarens
Tipped as a team to watch this season, Lotus makes a statement by securing the third-fastest time in this first qualification of the season, thanks to Romain Grosjean who ranks behind the two McLarens. Kimi Räikkönen, on the other hand, was victim to a small communication error that prevented him from passing Q1.
Romain Grosjean – 2nd and 3rd
Today, it’s like a dream come true. I only discovered the Albert Park circuit in the dry this morning and didn’t know what to expect. When I heard my position on the radio, I just couldn’t believe it. This third place shows one thing: you must believe in your dreams and hold onto them, no matter what. Many people still believed in me after my first life in F1, but we all worked very hard to start a new adventure, and I’m very happy to be able to deliver a great performance right from the start of the season. Thanks also to the team for designing such a beautiful, neat, and fast car. I won’t get carried away because, as the saying goes, you don’t score points on Saturday. We all know Melbourne can deliver very challenging races. I hope we can keep going like this throughout the season and that the story will be beautiful in the end.
Kimi Räikkönen – 12th and 17th
« Today didn’t go as planned. There is no problem with the car; I made a mistake and there was a communication error, so the timing wasn’t right to do another lap. It costs us a good position, but that happens sometimes. We could have easily been in Q2. It’s not the best start, but we will try to improve on that in the race. The car is fast. The handling is fine. It doesn’t perfectly match what I want, but it doesn’t affect my driving. Of course, we can do better than 18th (17th eventually due to Perez’s penalty) tomorrow, so we have to see what will happen. »
Alan Permane – Track Operations Director
Overall, we are happy. It is clear that we have a car with a good pace here at Albert Park, as illustrated by Romain’s performance during the qualifications. Things did not go well for Kimi: he was behind on his schedule and made a few mistakes, otherwise he could have been in a good position.
«Throughout the winter, we thought we had a good single-seater, but you never know exactly where you stand compared to your rivals. Today on the Albert Park circuit, we did well, so it’s a very good start, and we exceeded our expectations. After the setback that forced us to miss a testing session this winter, it’s good to see that all the work has paid off with a fast car. Every time we drove the EE20, we were quite comfortable. The basic settings have worked well on three different circuits so far. Hopefully, this will continue on the 19 other circuits we will visit this year. »
«As always, we need to analyze the data and see what is possible (for the race). For Romain, it is clear that he will have the fastest strategy; for Kimi, we will see if we can find an interesting solution to help him move up. He clearly qualified far back, but he has the advantage of having three new sets of Softs, which will help him.»
