Lotus Renault trying to figure out the medium tyres

November 25th, 2011 (F1plus Team).- Lotus Renault used three drivers for today’s practice sessions at Interlagos for the Brazilian GP: Romain Grosjean , Bruno Senna and Vitaly Petrov.

The sunny session saw the main teams once more leading the pack, with Webber registering the best time in the first and then Hamilton doing the same but in the second run.

Lotus Renault feels like they got solid results, but they accept that they need to figure out how to make the best use out of the medium tyres. Their drivers struggled and they all complained of understeer and oversteer, and on top of that, the overall lap time change when compared to the soft compound was just to big: around 1.5 to 2 second quicker for the soft ones.

Here is what the drivers have to say about todays’ sessions:

Bruno Senna
Free practice 1: P14, 1:15.732, 32 laps
Free practice 2: P12, 1:14.931, 37 laps

Bruno: “It’s been an interesting day. The performance in the second session was considerably better than that of the first session. Our times this afternoon were much more in line with the other teams than we could say for this morning. For tomorrow, we need to work on the balance of the car. That will be crucial to ensure we have a strong qualifying and give ourselves a good chance come Sunday too.”

Vitaly Petrov
Free practice 2: P11, 1:14.856, 38 laps

Vitaly: “FP1 was interesting for me and it was actually a very good experience to be on the pit wall for a session. It enabled me to understand better what the engineers see and what they require from the driver so I can put this knowledge to practice in future. In FP2 there were no mechanical problems, so I think my crew did a very good job to repair the car after the clutch problem in the morning. We know this is not an easy track for our car as you can see with our times. It will be difficult tomorrow in qualifying, but we work hard to try and get into Q3 but it’s not going to be easy. Today we were struggling with rear traction and oversteer so we focused on improving this area as it is certainly hurting our pace.”

Romain Grosjean
Free practice 1: P12, 1:15.547, 18 laps

Romain: “I was looking forward to jumping in the car again this morning and the experience did not disappoint. I loved every minute of it. It’s a track I particularly like; a fantastic old-style circuit, with lots of fans in the grandstand too. We have seen some interesting data on the technical side, which the team is already looking at for next year. I want to spend as much time as I can in the car, and I really love getting behind the wheel – it’s a job I love.”