Can GP – Race weekend recap - Grosjean

Following a disappointing Monaco Grand Prix, the Lotus team were looking to the weather to help them out in Canada.

The team have identified that they get the optimum performance out of the 2012 Pirelli’s when the track temperature is higher than average. So when the teams turned up at a damp and cold Monaco, they knew they were in for a struggle.

In Canada the weather was an improvement, but with the mercury set to rise throughout the weekend, Lotus had a reason to remain optimistic despite not grabbing many headlines during practice.

In Free Practice One both Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen were well off the pace, over a second down in 14th and 15th, with 0.124 seconds splitting the two team-mates.

In Free Practice Two they again finished 14th and 15th over a second slower than Lewis Hamilton who topped the timing sheets, but again with Grosjean ahead of Kimi by 0.202 seconds. In Free practice three they both slotted into eighth and ninth place, showing remarkable consistency between the two Lotus drivers, this time Grosjean’s gap to Kimi was just 0.104.

It was all looking set for a very interesting qualifying session, however Kimi Raikkonen just could never get his car hooked up for his final timed lap and he went out in Q2, leaving Grosjean to battle for seventh place in qualifying.

“For sure we wanted a bit more from qualifying but this is a tricky circuit to get right, and the big variation between conditions yesterday and today didn’t help. The warmer temperatures definitely suited us more but not quite as well as we thought. The car felt pretty strong but my last run could have been better, which is a shame. Still, making it through to Q3 is never a bad thing and it’s a long race tomorrow. Our car has been quite easy on tyres so far this season and hopefully that could make the difference. Last time I started in P7 we ended up on the podium, so let’s hope it can happen again tomorrow!” he told formula1.com after qualifying and his prediction came true!

With the temperatures rising the conditions suited the Lotus a lot more and despite running the same strategy as the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso and the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel, his tyres didn’t fall off the cliff and as the final stage of the race went on he passed the two former F1 champions to take second place and he even closed the gap towards Lewis Hamilton, although the McLaren driver was probably completely a conservative final stint.

After the race he said: “It’s been a great day for the team. It was an incredible race and the one stop strategy worked perfectly for us. It wasn’t an easy race, but we wanted to be aggressive to achieve a good result. Yesterday was a bit disappointing, but we learnt a lot from Friday to Saturday and the fruits of all these lessons were seen today. It wasn’t easy to manage the second set of tyres for so long, but it worked so I’ll happily do that again for another result like today. It’s fantastic to finish in second position on my first visit to Montreal, hopefully I will finish in first on my second time! I would like to thank the entire team for the amazing job we’ve done this weekend”

Just like Perez, this was Grosjean’s second podium of the season, showing just how well he can do when he can finish a race!

From the first seven races he has retired from three of them, but in the four he has finished, his lowest place was sixth, with his second this weekend his best result of the season.

He now sits seventh in the Formula One World Championship on 53 points, just two points behind team-mate and 2007 Formula One World Champion Kimi Raikkonen.