Romain Grosjean: Letting Kimi Raikkonen go past me was the right decision taken by Lotus

Romain Grosjean (car closest to picture) was ahead of Kimi Raikkonen during the German GP.

Romain Grosjean, the Lotus driver, has given a thumbs up to the team decision in which he was ordered to let his team mate Kimi Raikkonen overtake him in the closing laps of the German Grand Prix.

The order was apparently because of the fact that Raikkonen opted for softer tyres much later than Grosjean and hence had better pace.

Grosjean said: “The first stint was amazing – seeing P1 on the board is always good.

“The car was working much better than what we thought on the option tyres. After the first pit-stop, Seb and myself were quite a long way ahead of everyone else and it was looking like we would try and adapt the strategy depending on how we were going. Then the safety car came.

“It made it easy for strategy, but less good then for the traffic. Clearly, as a team, we had to put different eggs not in the same basket and change to different strategies for Kimi and myself. It appears that Kimi’s one worked better, but it could have been the opposite. It’s good to be back on the podium, and good to score strong points.”

When asked about his shot at the title, he said he would fight for it if the opportunity opened up for him.

“Today, as I said, we didn’t put our eggs in the same basket and Kimi was quicker, [He] might have gained on Sebastian, but it didn’t work. I think it was the right thing to do.

“It is important for a team to score points and try to get the win. Without the safety car, it would have been a different story, but we all got together and that was it.”