• Italian Grand Prix

D'Ambrosio impresses Lotus hierarchy

Jerome d'Ambrosio finished 13th at Monza, his best grand prix finish to date © Sutton Images

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• Drivers:
• Eric Boullier
• |
• Jérôme d'Ambrosio

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Jerome d'Ambrosio's performance at the Italian Grand Prix was described as "an amazing job" by Lotus team principal Eric Boullier after he suffered a KERS failure.

Starting from 15th on the grid d'Ambrosio had targeted a point in his one and only race of the season standing in for the suspended Romain Grosjean. A KERS failure early in the race heavily compromised his afternoon and restricted him to a 15th place finish, but Boullier was quick to praise d'Ambrosio's efforts.

"Jérôme did an amazing job after being thrown in at the deep end," Boullier said. "Without his KERS issue I'm pretty sure he could have achieved a points finish."

Trackside operations director Alan Permane also had praise for d'Ambrosio.

"Jérôme had one arm tied behind his back with a KERS failure very early in the race and KERS is worth a significant amount of time here," Permane said. "He did a very credible job despite this, and his pace on the medium compound tyre in the second part of the race was pretty good."

D'Ambrosio himself was pleased with his drive, and said he had learnt a lot throughout the weekend despite not being able to challenge for points.

"After losing my KERS on lap 6 it was always going to be tough as that's worth about half a second per lap around here," he said. "I got a good start and was up fighting with Daniel [Ricciardo] and Nico [Rosberg], but once I lost that extra boost it was impossible to keep up and I dropped back. My last stint on the medium tyres in clean air was pretty good and I didn't make many mistakes, so maybe with a bit more luck we could have had a slightly better result.

"My main aim was to finish the race and I've achieved that so it's not so bad overall. It was great to be back in the car and especially with such a fantastic team; I've learnt a lot this weekend."

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