Lotus Renault GP boss Eric Boullier says his team's poor showing in the Monaco Grand Prix acted as a wake-up call for it to find out why it has not built on its strong start to the season.
The team had high hopes of fighting among the leaders in Monaco but neither Nick Heidfeld nor Vitaly Petrov figured prominently in the event. Boullier says that the poor showing in Monaco helped serve as a catalyst for it to make design tweaks to its car to address its weaknesses. Having made changes to its blown floor concept and diffuser, plus tweaked its DRS wing for Canada, Boullier has said that he believes things will now improve.
"We had a strong first two races, quite strong, but then we slowed down a little bit compared to the competitors," Boullier said. "Monaco was a big wake-up call for us because we could not find exactly what was wrong, or what was the reason why we could not perform as we were expecting. I think the guys at the factory did a good job, they started to figure out what were the reasons for that and I am pretty confident we are now back on the right slope."
Boullier said that the car's struggles on the slow-speed Monaco circuit had helped highlight where its issues were.
"Obviously, we were expecting much better. We know our car is good but we didn't perform well. We were already looking for the reasons why, but the Monaco specific layout helped us to understand why."