Kimi Raikkonen - 9thIt wasnt the easiest qualifying session after a weekend which hasnt been the easiest so far either. Yesterday it was difficult at times to find the balance with the car and I found that again today. This morning it felt good and we didnt do too bad in free practice, but we didnt quite get it right this afternoon. My lap wasnt great, but its a long race so well just have to see what we can do tomorrow.
Romain Grosjean - 11thIts obviously disappointing to miss out on Q3 but its just one of those things. There werent any issues with the car, we just tried to be a little too brave by doing just one run and unfortunately it didnt pay off. On the positive side, weve found a lot of performance this weekend compared to the first three races and our pace on the prime tyres in Q1 looked very strong. We qualified in similar positions last year and came away with a double podium, so its still all to play for.
Alan Permane, Lotus trackside operations directorWere obviously disappointed with the qualifying result. We just missed the cut for Q3 with Romain who had been looking strong, but unfortunately the track evolution caught us out a little bit and he made a couple of small errors on his only lap in Q2. If this hadnt been the case, were sure he would have made it through. Kimis session was a bit more of a mystery. His second run in Q2 was pretty respectable but it just didnt come together for him in Q3. Hes been strong all weekend up until that point, so well need to trawl through the data this evening to understand what happened. Romain has plenty of new tyres to work with and starting on fresh rubber should give him a good boost at the start and through the first stint. We can decide which compound he will start on so well be crunching the numbers to work out the optimum strategy. Romain has plenty of new tyres to work with and starting on fresh rubber should give him a good boost at the start and through the first stint. We can decide which compound he will start on so well be crunching the numbers to work out the optimum strategy. We were very happy with our long run pace yesterday, with both cars showing decent pace and manageable tyre degradation levels. Its a tough race on tyres which tends to work to our advantage and we managed a great result from a very similar situation this time last year, so were certainly not out of it yet.
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