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Monaco was just a blip - Boullier

Monaco was a tough weekend for Lotus © Sutton Images

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• Drivers:
• Eric Boullier
• |
• Kimi Räikkönen

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Lotus team principal Eric Boullier expects his team to bounce back immediately after a difficult weekend at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Kimi Raikkonen salvaged just one point from the race while Romain Grosjean was involved in a series of incidents over the weekend, the last of which saw him penalised 10 grid places for the next race in Canada. Boullier believes Monaco was not representative of the team's form this year and that it will recover in Canada.

"As long as Monaco was just a minor blip - and there's nothing to suggest that it wasn't - there's no evidence to suggest we can't return to consistently strong performances and be back in the reckoning for big points," he said. "One bad race in nineteen doesn't define your Championship; we just need to ensure that we don't have another weekend like Monaco.

"Despite the negatives of the result however, there are positives. Once more our car was competitive at a very different venue and we have now shown we can compete on all types of circuit. We have also maintained a good rate of development with the E21 relative to our opposition which bodes well for the rest of the season. As a weekend it was very frustrating, yes, but Monaco is often like that."

Raikkonen thinks the championship is still all to play for, despite losing 17 points to leader Sebastian Vettel in Monaco.

"For sure we lost ground on the lead in Monaco, but it's not over yet. It's still early in the season and twenty-one points behind is not too much to catch up; especially if Sebastian has a bad weekend too at some point. The most important thing is that we return to our race level before Monaco to get things going our way as soon as possible."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.