Mixed bag for Romain Grosjean in Barcelona

Next stop Australia for Romain, with his work for the week now done and dusted here at the Circuit de Catalunya. We caught up with the man himself to hear his thoughts on Barcelona, Melbourne and his trusted steed for the year; the E21…

Romain, how would you summarise your week in Barcelona?

The last two days haven’t been ideal in terms of the weather, but I think we made the most of them despite the cold and rain; it’s certainly a better feeling to end the session with the fastest time on the board rather than the slowest! We’ve been learning a few things about new parts for the car and how to get the best from them, we had strong reliability again today and the E21 feels good in all conditions which is very promising for the season ahead. Hopefully it’s going to be dry this weekend so we’ll see now what further gains the team can make with the baseline setup during the next two days and then it’s off to Melbourne!

Consistency in such mixed conditions is always hard to find; with that in mind, what was the focus for you today?

We looked at a few new elements for the car and also did a bit of setup work. To be honest it’s difficult to read too much into what we have seen here as the track is very green and temperatures are a long way off what we expect to find in Australia, meaning the tyre degradation is very high. After just a few laps you see the times falling away by as much as a few seconds, so it’s tricky to push as hard as you would like to really get a feeling for the setup. Unfortunately there’s only so much you can learn in these situations…

Are you feeling confident heading to Australia?

It’s impossible to say where we stand relative to the other teams at the moment. I’m hoping we’ll have one of the top cars on the grid, but we won’t know for sure until Saturday in Melbourne. For me the car feels good; there are always a few things you want to improve after testing, but overall I’d say we’re not far away. I’m looking forward to it…

Source: www.lotusf1team.com