Saturday: Traffic prevents Grosjean from better rewarding Lotus’s work
After seriously damaging his Lotus E21 during another off-track excursion, Romain Grosjean was still able to participate in the qualifying sessions thanks to the hard work of his mechanics. However, traffic prevented the Frenchman from doing better than 13th place, even though he could have legitimately aimed for a spot at the front. Kimi Räikkönen will start in 5th position.
Kimi Räikkönen – 6th and 5th:
« Difficult day due to the weather, but everyone was in the same boat. Obviously, qualifying here is never easy with the traffic, the barriers, and dry conditions are always preferable because it gets very slippery when it rains. I’m happy to have made it into the top 10, and 5th was more or less the best we could achieve, being six-tenths behind the car ahead of me. I don’t really know what we are going to do in the race. It’s not very clear yet because you never know exactly what strategies others will use, but we’ll find out tomorrow, of course. »
Romain Grosjean – 2nd and 13th:
« The team did an incredible job getting the car back in shape after what happened in free practice 3 this morning. I’m extremely grateful to them. I owe them a lot today, and that will mean even more drinks to buy at the end of the weekend. We had the car to achieve very good qualifying, but I ran into Daniel [Ricciardo] in Q2 when the track was drying and getting faster. I only had two laps on slicks and couldn’t make it into the top 10, which is really frustrating. What else is there to say? It’s Monaco. We had different weather conditions, and it’s a unique circuit. We’ll see what happens during the race. »
From the press release published by Lous F1 Team
