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After a not-so-memorable performance at Melbourne, Romain Grosjean says that Lotus has been working hard to fix all its loopholes, and that the team’s strength is greater than ever. Grosjean further stated that 2014 is not a transitional year for Lotus, despite plenty of its staff leaving the team. Read on for more interesting points from the ever-positive Grosjean.
Speaking to the international media ahead of the Malaysia Grand Prix, Grosjean shared quite a lot of interesting points. The first obvious question was whether the team expects a step up in their performance as compared to the opening race.
“Hopefully yes. We have made a lot of changes on areas where we know we could improve, and we learned a lot from the race data on Sunday. So, hopefully, we have done our homework, and it’s not that everything is 100% but if we could get a step up, it would be nice.”
Grosjean also pointed out that the team were extremely nervous to target any result at Melbourne, and that they felt uncomfortable as they had not picked up enough mileage in testing.
“Melbourne was a different kind of weekend, as we haven’t done enough mileage in testing, and you don’t know where you gonna be, and if you’re extremely lucky, things may go right, and basically, it wasn’t the case. So yea, it was a bit of strange to come up Sunday morning, and say, we trained up good. We were lots nervous, and it was strange to say that we’re competing for results while we’re starting from the pit-lane.”
Grosjean further revealed that their strategy for the upcoming practice session is to fine-tune the car rather than looking for tenths or hundredths of seconds.
“Yea, I hope so but I don’t want to be too confidential or too carefree. We want to jump into the car, see the state of charge, as fuel management is getting better, and our brake system is getting better as well, and if we treat the tyres well and get few other things right, it would be a step forward. We’re not looking at tenths, hundredths, but just the final setup of the car, and we have the Friday session to fine-tune the torsion bars, and springs and see where it’s headed and which way we should go with our car, and if things go in the right direction, it’s going to help us.”
He was asked about how he spent his break, and Grosjean was happy to admit that he spent his days working at the factory and trying to set things right.
“I went to Europe, went to the factory, and spent a day in the SIM, and had a debrief with our Engineers, sent few e-mails, and had some training.”
“Everyone in the team is working harder, and sticking together, and the team’s strength is stronger than ever. We’re all in the same boat, and trying to get 100% right with the car which is always the case when it goes wrong. The aero department is trying to bring updates, and everyone in their respective area is trying to contribute and do it in the right direction.”
As for the team’s prospects of being competitive at Spain, Grosjean stated that he is sure that they won’t be 100% even after the end of the season due to the vast section of technology being developed throughout the season, but that they are trying to get a step-up each time they head out to the track.
“To be honest, even at the end of the calendar year, we won’t be 100% as technology is so huge that everyone is learning a lot after each session on track. So yea, Spain could be a place where we could face a huge step, although every time we’re trying to improve, and get a step up on track. We don’t have resources of 4 big teams, but hopefully things go right.”
Ironically, Grosjean doesn’t feel that this is a transitional year for Lotus.
“I wouldn’t say that it’s a transitional year, it’s just that a tough phase following a different period of the team.”
And lastly, Grosjean pointed out that the silly things detected after the testing are the areas on which they would be working.
“We missed the first test but it’s not a big issue, as we went to Bahrain and faced no major problems as compared to Melbourne where we realised that the brake by wire system wasn’t working properly, and these silly silly things are the area where we could work on.”
