Eric Boullier: “I had to take some decisions…”

Lotus Renault team principal Eric Boullier says that Nick Heidfeld has been dropped because of his poor performance and lack of leadership qualities.

Boullier denied that the Genii Group’s recent massive business deal in Brazil played any part in Bruno Senna’s promotion.

“We have reviewed our performance, our level or motivation, a lot of things, through the summer time,” said the Frenchman. “I had to take some decisions to clearly show some new directions. There was an opportunity as well to assess Bruno as a driver. And this is why we moved on.”

Yesterday Heidfeld’s management said that the legal situation will be resolved after Monza, but Boullier insisted that the decision had been made by the UK courts last week, and didn’t expect it to change at the second hearing, set for September 19.

“We have a contract in place, and actually I understand they have a different interpretation to the contract than I have. So we have a divergence of opinion. He didn’t want listen or didn’t want to speak [about] any settlement, so he decided to go to the High Court, and the court ruled out everything in our favour. So that’s it, end of story.

“The hearing is done, and it’s over. What happened now is that their lawyers are trying to go to court. You never know with justice, but the High Court ruled everything in our favour. Everything he was asking has been pushed back.”

Asked by this writer what Heidfeld had done wrong, Boullier said: “I am not here to explain everything. Come on, every session, every weekend, the media jumped on me asking why Vitaly is faster than Nick? Every time. You need to guess by yourself, I was not very happy with let’s say the pure speed of Nick, and his global performance as an experienced driver. That’s it.”

He also insisted that he had no regrets about hiring Heidfeld after Robert Kubica was injured, when Senna was available and could have got the job.

“No. To be honest I was happy with the decision we took with Nick. Nick is a nice guy, you know. But I think something didn’t work, I mean his leadership didn’t work in the team. And when you are sometimes slower than Vitaly, and actually most of the time slower than Vitaly, it is difficult for him to push the team, and to settle himself as the team leader.

“At the end if you speak in terms of management, not only speed, when you have the negative spiral starting, the negative loop, it is complicated to stop it.

“I don’t say the performance of the team was because of Nick. The car is not good enough, we have not developed the car enough. We made mistakes as well. But the loop is negative.

“So I had to change something in the team, and I had to change something with the drivers as well, to shake up and wake up everybody.”