Romain Grosjean says Lotus need more testing time to get on top of the problems they are having with the E22.
“Every time we go testing we seem to have problems and this situation hasn’t helped us,” said Grosjean, who had to cut his day of testing short after suffering power unit problems this week.
“Luckily in the races it’s been better and we have gained knowledge from a performance point of view. But I do wish we had more testing as we’re currently playing catch-up.
“When you’re struggling a bit, all this new technology means it’s hard to get the reliability. We haven’t been very lucky with testing so far.”
Grosjean said the team didn’t get anywhere near completing its work plan for the two-day Bahrain test.
“Unfortunately we struggled with the power unit and couldn’t manage many laps. We did some aero work but compared to the programme we had planned it was far too little.
“We want to work but if the car won’t run cleanly there is not much we can do. We have to keep pushing and be motivated to learn what we can, when we can.”
Lotus are bringing several aerodynamic updates for the car this weekend. “We have lots of parts for the car which should make it faster, but we need reliability to be able to test these,” said Grosjean.
“So far, when we’ve finished it’s been just outside the points. If we can get a little bit more performance and reliability, we’ll be finishing in the points.
“We can build a strong season from this point on and everyone is concentrating on this goal.”
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Image © Lotus/LAT
ciprian (@ciprian)
11th April 2014, 16:15
He might be, but it really seems a ‘lost’ year for Lotus.
eljueta (@eljueta)
11th April 2014, 18:56
I feel bad for Grosjean, I used to dislike him because he crashed into everybody, but then he learned and by the end of last season he was being really fast. Here’s to hoping Lotus can turn this around.
Andrei (@crandreico)
12th April 2014, 0:26
He was already a very, very fast driver even when used to race recklessly. But then as usually, the bads outweighs the good.
Roald (@roald)
11th April 2014, 19:53
There were plenty of opportunities to test pre-season.
Dave (@)
11th April 2014, 21:23
And?
Boomerang
11th April 2014, 21:44
“Every time we go testing we seem to have problems and this situation hasn’t helped us,” – this is a weird comment.
I was really happy to see them faster than Redbull after the first Bahrain presason test. They were a whole second quicker and it was quite a surprise. However, during the second preaseason test they could barely drive a car. Switch in the performance surprised them as well. It seems that Renault interfered in order to protect their Works team. It is much better to experiment with someone who is second fiddle and apply good solutions to the Works team rather than treating them equaly. They seem to be Renault’s guinea pig. It’s so weird they perform more reliably during the race compared to tests.
Pandaslap (@pandaslap)
12th April 2014, 20:35
I’m confused. Renault has a works team?
GeeMac (@geemac)
13th April 2014, 6:47
Yes, and it is Red Bull Racing.
Pandaslap (@pandaslap)
14th April 2014, 7:36
@geemac See, I had no idea. I assumed that there has not been a Renault works team since they pulled out of Enstone a few years back.