Differing fortunes for the Lotus drivers. Kovalainen was satisifed with the car’s handling but failed to finish, while Trulli was less happy with his car and, although being counted among the classified finishers, ended the race perched on top of another car.
| Jarno Trulli | Heikki Kovalainen | |
| Qualifying position | 19 | 18 |
| Qualifying time comparison (Q1) | 1’17.134 (+0.04) | 1’17.094 |
| Race position | 15 | |
| Average race lap | 1’27.059 (-0.553) | 1’27.612 |
| Laps | 70/78 | 58/78 |
| Pit stops | 1 | 1 |
Jarno Trulli
A slow pit stop left Trulli behind the HRT cars. With eight laps to go frustration got the better of him and he tried a risky move on Karun Chandhok at Rascasse. The two banged wheels and Trulli landed on top of Chadhok’s car.
According to Mike Gascoyne, Trulli didn’t enjoy the same good balance Kovalainen found:
For Jarno, he had a much more difficult weekend, clearly struggling with the balance of the car and I think as a team we have to take a look at everything to be able to do a better job for him. Obviously he was compromised by the slow pitstop, which dropped him down the field and affected his whole race.
Mike Gascoyne
Compare Jarno Trulli’s form against his team mate in 2010
Heikki Kovalainen
Edged Trulli in qualifying by four-hundredths of a second. After the second restart he was behind Vitaly Petrov and felt the Renault driver wasn’t that much faster than him:
It was a fantastic race right from the beginning. I had a bit of a struggle at the restarts to get the tyres up to temperature, but once I got everything working I was able to almost keep up with the Renault.
I was pushing very hard, and the car felt fantastic – the balance was really good. Just before I retired I could feel the steering alignment was a bit uneven – on the right hand corners I had to use maximum lock, even in the tunnel, and it got the point where it didn’t feel safe any more.
In Monaco you can’t take a risk with it so I came in. It was a mechanical issue, but despite that I’m really pleased with today.
Heikki Kovalainen
The lap time data suggests Petrov was about a second a lap quicker but this was still a decent performance from Kovalainen.
Compare Heikki Kovalainen’s form against his team mate in 2010
sato113
17th May 2010, 14:58
at least all the new teams raced for the majority of the laps. good mileage is especially nice around monaco.
macahan
17th May 2010, 15:42
Lotus did well consider everything.
It seems odd that Trulli was 0.553 sec average lap time faster then Kovalainen when looking at the lap charts because it sure looks like Heikki was faster by 1-2 sec for most part with exception of SC and pit stop laps. where they where pretty even just don’t seem right? Sure the data is not backwards?
Mike
17th May 2010, 16:32
huh? It looks ok to me. Are you reading it upside down?
Mike
17th May 2010, 17:15
Nvm, I misunderstood.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
17th May 2010, 16:49
The safety car laps will have hurt Kovalainen’s average more than Trulli’s because Trulli did more green flag laps.
James_mc
17th May 2010, 21:19
Did Lotus have a problem with the Right-Rear gun or was it the wheel assembly itself that was causing the problems? I saw that they used a back-up gun in the 2nd stop but it still seemed to be problematic
Electrolite
18th May 2010, 23:04
Heikki’s race pace was miles ahead of Trullis! Even before the HRTs got ahead of him.