Lotus E21 demonstrated strong potential in Friday's practice session at India
Both cars showed top 10 results, Romain claimed P3 in second pracitce.
Kimi Raikkonen, Lotus F1 E21
XPB Images
Romain Grosjean ended the first day of practice for the Indian Grand Prix with the third fastest lap of the day, whilst Kimi Räikkönen was eighth at the Buddh International Circuit. Both drivers completed their Friday programmes, with extra focus given to long runs on Pirelli’s soft and medium tyre allocation.
Kimi Räikkönen, E21-05Free practice 1: P17, 1:28.730, 18 laps
Free practice 2: P8, 1:26.632, 32 lap
Kimi: “The car feels pretty okay now, but we can still make it better. We made quite a few changes in the morning as it didn’t feel so good then, but it’s much better now and we should be able to make more progress for tomorrow. The track is quite slippery, but that improves with time and the car gets better too.”
Romain Grosjean, E21-04
Free practice 1: P4, 1:26.990, 20 laps
Free practice 2: P3, 1:26.220, 36 laps
Romain: “That was a good start to the weekend. The car feels good and we made progress through the day to make it better. It’s still a struggle to find grip here which can make things interesting as you find the limits, but the pace of our car relative to our rivals looks quite good. I’m hopeful of another solid day tomorrow which should give us another strong qualifying position if the evidence of today is anything to go by. We’ll do everything we can to take the fight to Red Bull.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:
“It was a difficult morning for Kimi who wasn’t happy with the balance of his car so his engineers made a reasonable amount of changes to the set-up over lunch, meaning the car was much more to his liking in the afternoon. Romain was generally happy with his car and just made minor changes to the set-up to get it 100% to his liking. We completed a good number of laps on low and high fuel with both tyres and we’re looking in strong shape. The Red Bulls are unfortunately looking incredibly quick, but we’re leading the charge behind them.”
Lotus F1 Team
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