Monaco Grand Prix: Lotus preview

Kimi Raikkonen is en route to one of his most successful Formula 1 seasons, apart from the title winning 2007. The Finn has got on the podium in every race except for the Malaysian Grand Prix and is second in the Constructor’s Championship only four points behind leader, Sebastian Vettel.

Swiss-born Frechman, Romain Grosjean, has put nothing better than mediocre performances this season except for his third place finish in Bahrain. Just like last year, Grosjean has had terrible luck and incredible timing in causing chaos on track. But the talent is there and all he needs is some motivation and help; he looks a better driver this season and as time goes on, he will improve and I won’t be surprised if he wins a world championship one day.

Now, getting back to present-day reality, Monaco offers a tough race for the Enstone-based team. Their car is excellent in maintaining tyres and they have good race pace, but they’ve been poor in qualifying and that has cost them. Raikkonen did acknowledge this and he was right. They need those qualifying performances soon and that should begin at the Monaco Grand Prix: a race where overtaking is extremely hard and a race where qualifying performances have judged the race so far.

Lotus improved their car prior to the Spanish Grand Prix and they put in a solid performance challenging the likes of Ferrari and Red Bull to the absolute limit. They seemed to have everything going extremely well but James Allison has since resigned from the team, and that comes as a major blow for the team. Raikkonen had said that he’d love if Allison were to remain in the team and that he was integral to the project but the Brit has left and is touted to possibly join Ferrari or Mclaren.

The team has moved on and we’ll see their performance in the Principality to give us a clear idea of how they will be without the tech genius.

The team have fun the Monaco Grand Prix twice, in 2004 with Jarno Trulli and 2006 with Fernando Alonso but both the winners were under the previous banner name, Renault. Last year, Raikkonen finished ninth on the grid and Grosjean ended the race prematurely.

This year, the team has some insane competition from the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari. I don’t mention Red Bull because I feel specifically mentioning them would insult their three year dominance in the sport. Mercedes look like the winners to me, Fernando Alonso, on the other hand is a champ in every definition of the word. He won the Monaco Grand Prix under Flavio Briatore with Renault and he loves this track.

If Lotus have to win, they have to put in a strong qualifying performance. Luckily this year Steve Slater doesn’t commentate and that means we won’t hear “..and that qualifies as a typical Romain Grosjean-moment,” even though there might be one considering the love of barricades the citizens of Monaco have.