Sunday: Disappointing result for Lotus Renault GP

Nick Heidfeld – 10th

« What penalized us a bit today were our starts. I lost a place to Adrian Sutil and then had to fight hard not to lose more. I finished more or less in the position I held during the race, behind Sutil. I managed to overtake him once, but he used his DRS to pass me back and unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to push harder to reclaim the place. It’s still one more point for the team, but I didn’t expect to finish behind a Force India and a Toro Rosso. Overall, this weekend, we pushed as hard as we could, but it simply wasn’t possible to extract more speed from the car on this track. However, we must stay optimistic because Silverstone is a track with many fast corners, and our car performs well under these conditions. We will also see if the new regulations affect our car’s performance, but I believe it will have a positive effect for the team. »

Vitaly Petrov – 15th

« Of course, I’m disappointed. I was very surprised that the tires performed so poorly for us, as some of our competitors were able to make only two stops while we needed three. We knew our car lacked speed, and the race clearly demonstrated it. We have a lot of work to do because we should easily finish in the top 10. The incident with Schumacher did not cause a puncture. He seemed to be exiting the pits very quickly and didn’t appear to be able to brake his car for the first corner. Fortunately, I saw him in my rearview mirror, but there was still a slight contact. We now need to sit down and precisely analyze where and why we are losing time in order to have a better race at Silverstone. »

Eric Boullier, Team Principal

Given our qualifications, we expected much more from the race. Ninth and eleventh on the grid allowed us to anticipate a real battle for points. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, and we weren’t able to make our cars climb back up after a poor start. That said, we still scored a point thanks to Nick, which allows us to maintain the fourth position in the constructors’ championship, ahead of Mercedes. We need to understand why we couldn’t close in on the cars in front of us. We know our car is fast, and it’s important to find out why we couldn’t break out of this false pace today.

Alan Permane – Chief Engineer

« Our two cars had a mediocre race, and we simply didn’t have enough speed to do better. We suffered from tire degradation strong enough to force us to make three stops. There was no way to make only two. Nick lost a position to Sutil at the second corner and wasn’t able to regain it. Vitaly lost four positions due to an early gear shift at the start, which ruined the rest of his race. We clearly struggled on circuits with low-speed corners. So we hope to return to the forefront on the fast curves of Silverstone. »

Riccardo Penteado – Chief Engine Engineer

A long and difficult race for us here. Everyone hoped for more points, considering the starting positions and the potential of the car up to that point. The temperature was high, as expected, but it did not cause us any issues. We were aggressive with consumption at the end of the race, as we were trying to gain positions. But unfortunately, Nick didn’t manage to overtake Sutil for ninth place. Nonetheless, this point is important because we remain ahead of Mercedes in the constructors’ championship. We detected a water leak on Vitaly’s car towards the end, but we were able to control it and finish the race. Overall, the weekend was difficult, with mappings having to remain the same between qualifying and the race. In this respect, we did a good job by maintaining enough performance in the race without losing much in qualifying, which required a great effort both on the track and at the factory.