Lotus team principal Eric Boullier has apologised for the radio messages exchanged between the team and Kimi Raikkonen during the Indian Grand Prix.

Raikkonen was struggling on worn tyres when team mate Romain Grosjean came up behind him and after putting up a fight for the position was told to “get out of the f***ing way” by Lotus’ Alan Permane. Raikkonen responded, telling the team not to shout at him and said he would give Grosjean the position – just not in a fast corner, or something along those lines.

Click here to hear the full message, including Raikkonen’s response.

Grosjean eventually finished the race on the podium in third place, while Raikkonen came home seventh after being forced to pit for fresh tyres.

Boullier explained, “Romain was 2 seconds per lap faster than Kimi at that time, so it was not even a team order.”

“By asking Kimi to let Romain pass, we just made the obvious choice, as Massa could have stolen our podium. With hindsight, this radio message could have been sent in a less emotional way. There was a lot of tension, a lot of potential technical problems, and some of the words that flew around were simply not appropriate.”

“I know that quite a few people were surprised and I can only apologise for that on behalf of the team. It won’t happen again.”

Boullier continued to say that Lotus did not perform perfectly but that both Raikkonen and Grosjean performed brilliantly. “We scored well, but it wasn’t a perfect performance as we messed up Romain’s qualifying and Kimi had a brake problem in the race,” he said. “These are two areas we need to address, but on race day everyone performed brilliantly. Romain had a very strong drive and managed to conserve his tyre performance right to the end.”

“He was fast despite having to nurse his engine, and being on the podium was a good reward for the whole team. Obviously it was disappointing that the tyres couldn’t last long enough for Kimi, as being third and fourth would have been an amazing result for the team and very useful in the Constructors’ Championship, but he managed his car’s brakes well to take a solid points finish.”

The apology was also posted on Lotus’ Facebook Page. Earlier in the day an image of a polar bear covering its eyes was also posted giving some indication that they know they’ve messed up. They most certainly lost a lot of respect from fans who took to their popular social media accounts on both Facebook and Twitter to blast the team and Permane for the way they spoke to Raikkonen. The Lotus PR team have their hands full with some very unhappy fans and a lot of the good PR work on social platforms which has seen Lotus’ Twitter account be crowned as the best F1 account a number of months in a row, seems to have been undone by Permane’s seemingly bitter behaviour toward Raikkonen.

Boullier is set to have a meeting with the drivers before the race in Abu Dhabi to ensure that this type of incident will not recur.