Romain Grosjean says backmarkers slowed him down at Hungarian Grand Prix – Formula 1 news
Romain Grosjean has said that the slow backmarkers cost him the second place to teammate Kimi Raikkonen at the recently concluded Hungarian Grand Prix.
The Lotus driver has been doing very well throughout the season and hit his third podium finish at Budapest. The Swiss felt that he could have finished a position up had it not been the slow backmarkers holding him down. He was running second during the
race until the final set of pit stops.
Raikkonen changed his tyres later than the other cars around him and was dropped back into the pack alongside his Grosjean. The Swiss conceded his position to his teammate after running side-by-side through the first corner.
“Unfortunately, I got stuck behind another car, which had been [blue] flagged but didn't let me past in this lap and I lost 1.5 seconds,” he said. “I wasn't very happy at that stage to be honest because I had been fighting for the win the whole race with
Lewis [Hamilton] and suddenly you get stopped by something you cannot really manage. Basically it was close with Kimi. He did what he had to do to not let me pass. I went a little bit on the outside and got the marbles on the tyres and then I struggled to
recover. It is what it is.”
Grosjean added that he may have been successful in overtaking Lewis Hamilton the leader of the race, in the first two stints but a bad first pit stop resulted in hurting his strategy.
Raikkonen who finished the race at second place behind Hamilton said that it was almost impossible to overtake Hamilton the way he was going in the race.
Grosjean added that it is really difficult to follow another car at the Hungaroring circuit. Then the driver also has to make sure to not make any mistakes. When he followed Hamilton, he lost a bit of grip on his tyres and after recovering from that a bit
the first pit stop hurt him badly.
He felt that was the only reason he was not able to finish a position higher than he did.
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