Lotus drivers need smooth weekend for win

Source: autosport.com

Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjeanbelieve Lotus will need to get everything perfect during races in order to have a shot at winning this year.

The Frenchman and team-mate Raikkonen have enjoyed a strong start to the season, with both finishing on the podium in the previous race in Bahrain.

Raikkonen was in the fight for victory but finished second, while Grosjean scored his maiden F1 podium with third.

Despite the strong outing, however, Grosjean reckons Lotus will need to get everything right during a race in order to win.

“We are in good shape, we had a good race in Bahrain but the base of the car in the race is good,” said Grosjean. “We know the team need to improve some areas but honestly to win a race this year would be to get everything right: the qualy, the race, the start.

“It is so tight it is very difficult to predict what will be the result on Sunday and if we were to have a bet we would get a lot of different points of view.”

Raikkonen agreed with his team-mate, the Finn confident his team can be up with the best if the weekend goes smoothly.

“I don’t know how it will go, it is difficult to say before the weekend starts,” said Raikkonen. “The teams are close and if everything goes smoothly we can be up there, but small difficulties mean you can be further back so we will try and do everything right.”

The 2007 world champion said he was still disappointed to have missed out on victory in Bahrain, but admitted it had been a good result for the team.

“I think once you get so close you are not happy with second and if you are 20 seconds behind it doesn’t matter, but we had a chance so it was a bit disappointing. But for the team it was a good weekend.”