Romain Grosjean looking to capitalise on fresh tyres

Having made an unfortunate exit from qualifying at the second hurdle, Romain Grosjean is eager to make amends in tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix

You missed out on Q3 by the merest of whiskers; tell us what happened.

It’s obviously disappointing to miss out on Q3 but it’s just one of those things. There weren’t any issues with the car, we just underestimated the track evolution. We were maybe a little too brave by doing just one run and unfortunately it didn’t pay off. On the positive side we have plenty of fresh tyres for tomorrow, so if we can work out a good strategy there’s still plenty to play for.

Have you found a better balance with the car?

Formula 1 is a complicated sport; aside from the mechanical grip from the car you have aerodynamics, KERS, DRS and of course the tyres so it’s very tricky to find a specific issue when things aren’t quite working how you want. The big positive is that we’ve found a lot of performance this weekend compared to the first three races. We seem to have put our finger on how to get more from the car and from the first lap this morning it felt much better.

What are your hopes for tomorrow’s race?

In Q1 we were fourth so we know the car has good pace on the hard tyre. We seem to struggle a little bit more on the medium, but there’s still time to work on things tonight to make sure we’re happy on both compounds. We qualified in similar positions last year and came away with a double podium, so anything is possible.