Lotus admits to favoring Räikkönen over Grosjean

Unable to provide each of its two drivers with the latest upgrades for its E21, Team Lotus admits, through its technical director, James Allison, to prioritizing Kimi Räikkönen over Romain Grosjean, thus explaining the lackluster start for the Geneva-born driver in Melbourne and Sepang.

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Rédigé par Par

In Melbourne, while Kimi Räikkönen savored the thrill of victory, Romain Grosjean left the Albert Park circuit with a meager tenth place, nearly a lap behind his team leader, as his reward. Although the Frenchman complained about the unrecognizable behavior of his Lotus E21, James Allison, technical director of the British team, admits that in the current situation, the Enstone team is forced to prioritize Kimi Räikkönen over his young teammate: « He didn’t have an easy weekend, both in Malaysia and Australia because we couldn’t provide both cars with exactly the same configuration each time », confides the British engineer.

In Melbourne on Friday, he was one degree behind Kimi regarding the aerodynamic package, then he received the updates on Saturday morning, but the day was disrupted by the weather. Here, [in Sepang], once again, we only had one example of our updates, and we decided to use them with Kimi, so Romain is at a disadvantage.

But the disadvantage of the tricolor driver depends on the effectiveness of the new features introduced. Indeed, since Kimi Räikkönen, due to his status as leader, has priority on the new features, he will be the first to suffer if they do not bring the expected effects or even degrade the behavior of his car: which apparently has not been the case so far.

To justify his team’s approach, James Allison recalls that with the ban on private testing during the season, teams now have only the Grand Prix to develop their cars and are generally forced to put their eggs in different baskets in terms of development: « We try to improve the cars as quickly as we can and this usually means there will always be a difference in package, and this almost inevitably means a driver can only evaluate new parts if there is a second version available. We always try to have parts for everyone, but it’s not always possible, so Romain is in difficult circumstances and also has to face a teammate who is firing on all cylinders: these are the two explanations [for his early season]. »

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