Both Lotus drivers today in Montreal were encouraged by strong pace in Friday practice, which they think places them in a strong position to claim a healthy haul of points in Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix.
Romain Grosjean surprised most by claiming third position in the first practice standings, and the team followed this up with P5 and P7 in second practice.
“It was a good day,” said Grosjean afterwards. “Quite surprising to be P3 this morning but the afternoon confirmed that we were looking in good shape. The car feels great.”
Maldonado concurred: “The car is working quite good in this characteristic of track,” he said. “In the morning and afternoon we were quite good with both cars, pretty consistent.”
Looking ahead to what sort of result Lotus can expect in the race, Grosjean said: “I think realistically we can try to give some hard time to the Williams, perhaps even beat them. I’m sure there will be four cars quicker than we are. If we can achieve something like P5 it would be really good.”
Maldonado agreed that Williams is the Enstone team’s main rival: “They’ve [Williams] always been our main objective since the start of the season, race by race we’ve been closing a little bit the gaps.
“I think we’ll be around that group…surprisingly we are quite close to the top teams.
“If our tyres will work as good as they’ve been today in the qualifying we will be very strong this weekend.”
In terms of what in particular about the Montreal track suits the Lotus, in addition to the strong Mercedes power unit Grosjean explained it was “just the way the car has been since day one, it’s very stable in the entry phase of the corners, it’s quite consistent, so turn one-two is actually good fun rather than last year it was just trying to go around.”
“The biggest difference from last year is that when you turn right, it actually goes right!”
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