Grosjean: Lotus F1 in the fog before Melbourne

Lotus F1 Team was unable to complete stints of more than 15 laps without encountering reliability problems on the E22. The situation of the British team is not good since the car black and gold with its very particular nose did not even turn at Jerez and its running remains very limited due to repeated problems. Romain Grosjean was only able to complete 65 laps at the end of the last two days on the Sakhir circuit.

“We can't do a race simulation until the Grand Prix (Australia, March 16) and we will have to work a lot on the car”, commented the Frenchman on Crash.net. “This is a situation to which we must adapt. We can only prepare ourselves for the Grand Prix where we will discover how to run for 300km. We will still try to score points. It's good to be competing here, but we are not satisfied with our current level. »

Romain Grosjean nevertheless hopes that his team will be able to quickly turn things around since they will still have two weeks before the season opener in Melbourne. “That doesn't mean it's over. We can try to come back during the season by securing as many points as possible in the first races. We did our best with the little lack of running time we had. We try to progress after each stop. Some things have moved in the right direction. But I don't think anyone expected it to be so complicated. There will be a lot of work for us and also for Renault. We must work together and achieve what we aim for. It won't be easy, but I think we've already made progress. »

Results of day 8 in Bahrain

1. Lewis Hamilton ? Mercedes ? 1'33"278? 70 rounds
2. Valtteri Bottas ? Williams +0 »709 ? 108 rounds
3. Fernando Alonso ? Ferrari +1 »002 ? 74 rounds
4. Nico Hulkenberg ? Force India +2 »299? 74 rounds
5. Jean-Éric Vergne? Toro Rosso +2 »423 ? 74 rounds
6. Adrian Sutil? Sauber +3 »189? 91 rounds
7. Max Chilton? Marussia +3 »557? 61 rounds
8. Esteban Gutiérrez? Sauber +4 »025? 86 rounds
9. Sebastian Vettel ? Red Bull +4 »190 ? 77 rounds
10. Jenson Button? McLaren +4 »833 ? 21 rounds
11. Kamui Kobayashi ? Caterham +5 »113? 106 rounds
12. Romain Grosjean? Lotus +6 »024? 32 rounds

Discover the analysis of the last week of winter testing in Bahrain carried out by our special correspondents in issue 1950 of AUTOhebdo, available from Monday at 22 p.m. in digital version on all platforms, and from Wednesday on newsstands.