• Hungarian Grand Prix

Grosjean blames backmarkers for losing second

Romain Grosjean lost second place to team-mate Kimi Raikkonen © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Hungarian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Romain Grosjean

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Romain Grosjean said slow backmarkers cost him second place to team-mate Kimi Raikkonen at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Grosjean was running second up until the final set of pit stops when Raikkonen changed tyres later than his rivals and fed back into the pack alongside his team-mate. The two Lotuses ran side-by-side through the first corner with Grosjean eventually running wide and conceding the position.

"Unfortunately, I got stuck behind another car, which had been [blue] flagged but didn't let me past in this lap and I lost 1.5 seconds," he said. "I wasn't very happy at that stage to be honest because I had been fighting for the win the whole race with Lewis [Hamilton] and suddenly you get stopped by something you cannot really manage. Basically it was close with Kimi. He did what he had to do to not let me pass. I went a little bit on the outside and got the marbles on the tyres and then I struggled to recover. It is what it is."

Grosjean said he was not able to pass Lewis Hamilton for the lead in the first two stints as a bad first pit stop hurt his strategy.

"It's really difficult to follow another car here, to be close and not do any mistakes. When I was following Lewis sometimes I was losing a little bit the grip of my tyres. Then I had to recover a little bit. Our first pit stop was a disaster. The second one was OK. We didn't get the chance to jump in on the pit stop strategy. I think that was the only key today because overtaking is really too difficult. You can feel that you're sliding tyres, losing the grip, sliding more and it gets worse and worse. So it's very difficult to follow."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.