Grosjean apologises to Lotus for Stevens clash

Lotus’ Federico Gastaldi says Romain Grosjean apologised to the team after his on-track incident with Manor’s Will Stevens prevented him from finishing higher than P10 at last weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.

Starting from fifth, the Frenchman was running well inside the top ten when he came to lap the Briton at the final chicane. Grosjean duly went on the inside but clipped the Manor’s front wing when he moved back across Stevens.

The Lotus man suffered a puncture and lost a fair amount of time in the ensuing pit stop before being handed a five-second time penalty. This dropped Grosjean to tenth place but the 29-year-old was still able to salvage the final point on offer by having a sufficient gap to Force India’s Sergio Perez in P11.

“It was a racing incident, Romain made a mistake and he apologised,” Gastaldi told F1i. “There is nothing more that we can say about it.

“First he thought this was not his fault but then he realised this was the case. Romain is serious and fair. These things sometimes happen during a race. That’s normal.”

Meanwhile, team-mate Pastor Maldonado enjoyed the sort of clean race weekend he had been craving for since the season’s kick off and duly picked up his maiden 2015 points as he reached the chequered flag in seventh.

While Gastaldi was understandably pleased with the Venezuelan’s Montreal results, his performance around Circuit Gilles Villeneuve did not come as a surprise to Lotus' deputy team principal.

“Pastor has done a fantastic job. People might not be aware of this but we’ve tried to hire him since 2010.

“I happen to know him from the past and he is a very quick driver. He can make mistakes sometimes like any other driver. But we know that if we give him a good car, he can deliver.

“In the end, we had a bittersweet result. Because we knew that Romain could have been up there as well.”

Click here for the latest photos from the Canadian Grand Prix

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