Lotus – Grosjean: “Making sure the car is in one piece”
After a challenging first day, Romain Grosjean discussed the issues that prevented him from driving much. He considers reliability to be the team's primary task.
The first day of testing in Bahrain saw the public debut of the Lotus E22, after an initial promotional run that was mostly out of sight on February 7th and 8th. And, like all Renault-powered cars since the start of the season, the Enstone single-seater experienced some issues preventing Romain Grosjean from completing more than 8 laps of the Sakhir circuit.
« I didn’t have a lot of work to do today and of course I did fewer laps than planned in the car, but it was still great to be on the track for the first time with the E22, » said the French driver. « For me, personally, it feels good to be back behind the wheel but a few issues kept us in the pits today. »
Problems that are partly related to atmospheric conditions, much warmer than in Jerez, according to the Franco-Swiss: « I think the problems are related to the temperature, we don’t understand everything at the moment. There were also minor issues related to the batteries. It’s impossible to say whether it’s a problem with Lotus or with Renault, » he stated.
Despite the fact that the Lotus was able to get back on track just before the end of the session yesterday, not everything was resolved: « I hope [that these problems] will be fixed, it’s important for us to have track time. There’s nothing you can do except work hard to solve the problems. I have to wait and trust the team. »
For him, the setup work is secondary, and it’s the reliability that needs to be worked on above all: « I don’t really pay much attention to setup work, that’s something for when we drive during free practice. We just need to fix all the issues and ensure the car is in one piece when we do long runs. I am confident that we can resolve our issues and will be able to put in the kilometers before heading to Melbourne. »
On Alan Permane’s side, the team’s technical director, the sentiment is the same: « Obviously, it wasn’t the day we wanted to have and there are few conclusions to draw as the running was very limited. It’s no secret, we are frustrated because we want to accumulate laps to understand our new car and all its different elements. The hybrid unit contains a lot of new technologies and we had issues with the battery [yesterday]. We changed it during the day, which is not a quick task. We hope for a better day [today]. »
