Lotus F1 Team
Pastor Maldonado said he was happy to return to the top 10 positions to conclude a challenging weekend for Lotus in Japan.
Lotus was locked out of its hospitality unit at Suzuka and faces a High Court hearing on Monday over alleged unpaid taxes.
Maldonado was nonetheless able to secure eighth place - his first points since Austria - to follow home team-mate Romain Grosjean.
"It was a good race for us and we really deserved a happy result today after pushing hard all weekend," he said.
"It’s a shame we weren’t able to keep [Nico] Hulkenberg behind us so we’ll review the strategy and performance to see if there was more we could have done.
"The team has been united all weekend, we scored some nice points and we’re looking forward to the rest of the season."
"When it came to my own race we were a little bit slow against the Force India," added Grosjean.
"We tried to fight Nico Hulkenberg but couldn’t. I really struggled with the tyres at the end – it seems the new Pirelli limits hurt us more than our rivals so we’ll work around that for the next race."
