A first front row start gives Romain the best qualifying position of his Formula 1 career to date, and the team’s highest grid slot of the season to boot. He may be known for his smile, but the Frenchman’s grin is bigger than ever this afternoon…
Romain, your first front row start in Formula 1; you must be pleased with that performance?
I’m delighted with that! Especially after the difficulties we had last weekend in Hockenheim and a tricky start to this weekend too. The engineers, mechanics and everyone else did an amazing job to give me a car capable of these kind of times after we struggled on Friday so a big thanks to all of them. I’m looking forward to the race already!
Yesterday you didn’t seem comfortable in the car, and just 24hrs later you’ve set the second quickest time of the day!
Ahh it’s a big secret! No, really it’s a little bit of everything; the work we did last night to analyse what wasn’t quite working so well, a bit of a change from me to adapt my driving style for the circuit and going back to a more basic setup that’s worked in the past which turned out to be a good decision. All these things together have made the difference today and who knows; if we’d had an easier start to the weekend it could have been even better…
How are you feeling heading into the race with a clear view in front?
It’s a new experience for me and it’ll make an interesting race for sure. Hopefully I can quickly settle into the same kind of rhythm we found in Bahrain and Canada where the car was behaving exactly as we want right from the start and we’ll see what we can do from there.
Source: www.lotusf1team.com