Paul Hembery: “This was certainly a very technically challenging race, on a circuit that we had never experienced in racing conditions before. Nonetheless, we chose to bring our soft compound together with the medium in order to provide plenty of opportunities for strategy.
“Although degradation was a factor in this race, which was already evident from the tactics adopted in qualifying, the tyres stood up extremely well to the demands that were placed on them. During the closing stages of the race, the priority for the drivers was to ensure that the tyres didn’t fall off ‘the cliff’ of performance: a task that they all managed very well.
“The closeness of the racing this year, during which we have narrowed the performance gap between our compounds, is reflected in the fact that we’ve seen four different winners in four races. It was also a great result for Lotus with two cars on the podium – and the first podium for our former test driver Romain Grosjean, who was with us when we tested at Bahrain in 2010: the experience was clearly useful to him. As for Kimi, he seems to have made the transition from our rally tyres to our P Zero race tyres pretty well!”
