Hun GP - Race weekend recap - Grosjean

Romain Grosjean stood on the podium for the third time in his career on Sunday.

The French Lotus driver had a very solid weekend as the temperatures rose and aided the team to a large points haul in Hungary.

It hadn't started brilliantly for Lotus, on Friday Grosjean was 0.812 off the pace in FP1 and 0.927 off the fastest time in FP2.

Saturday though brought an improvement for the team, during the final practice session Grosjean was 0.560 and the gap continued to close throughout qualifying.

In the end Grosjean managed to qualify on the front-row of the grid, while team-mate Kimi Raikkonen could only manage fifth.

“Qualifying was very tight and it was difficult to see where we would end up so on the front row is fantastic. We came here after a difficult weekend at Hockenheim and to be honest I didn’t get off to the best start yesterday. We worked hard to improve things overnight and the car felt much better in practice this morning. I’m very happy and just a little bit surprised to be P2 on the grid. Today’s job is done, let’s see what we can do tomorrow.” he told formula1.com after qualifying.

During the race Grosjean held pace with leader Lewis Hamilton, but never really showed the pace capable of challenging for the race win and towards the first stint of pit-stops he started battling with Jenson Button, but the Lotus appeared to have the match of the McLaren.

Once Button switched to a three stop tyre strategy, Grosjean looked to be set for a second place finish, but he was caught on the second pit-stop by team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.

The two Lotus drivers drove side-by-side around the first corner, becoming ever so close to touching, but great driving from the pair prevented contact and in the end, Grosjean was squeezed out of the corner and Kimi took second place.

Unsurprisingly in a Grand Prix that lacked any real drama that manoeuvre was the talk of the paddock after the race.

The move was hard, but fair and Grosjean acknowledged that, but did complain about Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher, who he thought had impeded him.

“It’s a good result for the team, but to be honest I’m a bit disappointed. We had a good battle for the lead with Lewis all through the first two stints, but then I got stuck behind Michael Schumacher who didn’t respect the blue flags at all which cost me a lot of time. Because of this I lost a place to Kimi, and at the same time a possible chance to fight for the win. It’s very hard to overtake here; every time I came close to someone in front I would lose a bit of front end grip which made it impossible. Still, that’s racing and we’ve take home a lot of points for the Constructors’ championship which is a real positive.”

The two podium positions for Lotus leaves them third in the constructors championship, 1 single point behind McLaren who are second.

They are now 3 points ahead of Ferrari and 86 points ahead of Mercedes.