Grosjean: We really want to start scoring points

What will be the main challenges at Sepang?

The first challenges in Malaysia will be the heat, humidity and usual rain storms at 4pm! It’s a good track with some interesting corners, fast straights and a track surface that can sometimes be difficult to understand. The heat and humidity can give the cars and drivers something to think about and the rain can give us all a challenge too. For us as a team, the target is to get some race laps on the board.

What did you learn from the Australian Grand Prix?

Albert Park was quite a strong weekend in terms of getting on top of the car, finding strong pace and a good balance and demonstrating good potential, but it was a very brief in terms of race laps, or should I say a race lap?! It was unfortunate that our race was very short because of quite a simple issue, but it’s something everyone back at Enstone has been working on. I’m sure we’ll have a much better race in Sepang.

What do you do after a frustrating race like the Australian Grand Prix?

It was frustrating to drive back to the pit at the end of the first lap, but despite this we’re all very positive in the team. Of course, there were a few choice expressions for a few moments afterwards, but we all have seen that this year’s car is good - it has great potential – and we know we’ll be delivering strong points finishes very soon, hopefully in Malaysia. For myself, I spoke with the team straight after returning to the pits and we were quite quickly able to work out what had happened. One frustrating race doesn’t detract from the full season ahead.

What do you think of the level of competition seen so far in the 2015 season?

It’s still early days, but it’s clear we’ve all got a lot of work to do to get to the level of the Mercedes. Behind them the pack is much closer. For us at Lotus F1 Team we know it’s the first season with a new engine supplier so we’re still learning about the potential. Certainly, the E23 has a lot more to come and it’s going to be very exciting working with everyone at Enstone to develop the car yet further.

How good a track is Sepang to race on?

It’s one of my favourites. It has a great flow to it and there are good overtaking opportunities as well as good potential for an exciting race. It’s a circuit that many drivers like. It’s also an interesting track for the engineers working to get the best set-up for the car to work well. It makes for quite a hard race too, as you have the heat and humidity along with the challenge of the track itself. It’s going to be fun.

How much of a challenge are the weather conditions?

We haven’t done any proper running with this car in the wet, so if we see rain during the course of a session it’s going to be a learning experience. The E23 demonstrates pretty good baseline characteristics and its driveability and balance are what you want from a car in the wet so this shouldn’t make for too many issues.

What do you think should be possible in the Malaysian Grand Prix?

Our target for the early races is to be regularly in the top ten. We certainly demonstrated that in Albert Park and our race pace simulations were good so if we’d remained in the race we should have finished strongly. There’s nothing to suggest this can’t be the case in Malaysia and we really want to start scoring points.