Lotus F1 Team
Pastor Maldonado says he is pleased with the Lotus E22, despite setting the slowest time during qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Maldonado was 18th in qualifying but will start from 16th as a result of penalties for Daniil Kvyat and Sergio Perez.
"It might not look like it from the lap time in qualifying, but I think we have a good car here, and certainly for the race," said the Venezuelan.
"We were not able to put everything in the right place today and it’s a bit disappointing for qualifying, but the race is where it matters. It’s a very long race, and it’s usually quite a challenging one. With the way our car has been performing during the practice sessions I think we can fight for the points."
Team-mate Romain Grosjean will start from 14th position.
"We knew this afternoon’s qualifying would be very close and it looks like some teams found more pace today than we did which means we didn’t quite make it through Q1," he said.
"The team has done a lot of work on my car overnight and it felt a lot better this morning – it’s not yet 100% where I want it to be, but it’s going in the right direction."
