Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsLotus F1

Lotus warns drivers over Spanish GP clash

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Lotus trackside operations director Alan Permane admits he was "very unhappy" with Pastor Maldonado and Romain Grosjean for colliding in the Spanish Grand Prix.

Grosjean ran wide at Turn 1 which slowed him as he rejoined at Turn 2. Having already lost one position due to the error, Grosjean was then overtaken by Maldonado around the outside of Turn 3 but the two made contact which damaged Maldonado's rear wing.

Speaking exclusively to F1i, when asked if he was unhappy the two drivers clashed Permane replied: "Yeah of course, very unhappy.

"I've been through it with both of them and sort of banged their heads together a little bit. It's difficult to absolutely 100% point the finger at one of them but it's unnecessary. They don't need to be doing that and I make it clear before the race that I don't expect them to take each other out.

"So it's a shame because both cars were strong and Pastor would have had a very, very strong race."

With Maldonado's rear wing endplate damaged in the incident, Lotus opted to pit him for emergency repairs before eventually retiring the car to avoid unnecessary risks.

"We got a message from Charlie. The biggest problem was when the piece was flapping around and if that had come off and hit someone I completely understand, so we pulled the car in and took that off. At that point they were still a little bit concerned about it but we went up to race control, had a good look at it on the TV. That isn't structural, that endplate, it stabilises it a bit but we were happy.

"Having said that after the last pit stop when it was clear we weren't going to get anything out of the race we decided to retire the car because of that. It would have been awful to take that risk and ended up injuring Pastor or someone else for absolutely nothing, so that's why we stopped."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.