• European Grand Prix - FP2

Race pace 'looks good' - Grosjean

Romain Grosjean was the only driver consistently lapping in the 1m44s on high fuel © Sutton Images

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• Report:
• Vettel on top during close FP2 in Valencia
  

• Race:
• European Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Romain Grosjean

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Romain Grosjean said that the race pace of the Lotus E20 was looking strong in Valencia and that the team would now have to focus on extracting more one-lap speed.

Lotus has had consistently one of the quickest cars in race trim this season and is tipped as one of the favourites for victory in Sunday's European Grand Prix despite having yet to win in 2012. Grosjean admitted that Friday practice had been promising in terms of race pace once again, especially with the car able to look after its tyres and deliver quick times at the end of stints.

"It was pretty good," Grosjean said. "It was less hot than what we were expecting today but tomorrow it may be different so we'll see. The car looks good on the long runs, looks good on high fuel as usual so that's good for the race, and now we have to get the extra bit for qualifying.

"[The long run] was alright, it was not too bad to be honest. You want to see what will be the strategy for the race - where you can get the tyres to and so on - but the last lap was pretty good, yeah."

With qualifying pace seemingly the biggest problem for Lotus, Grosjean said it was not an area it had looked at too much on Friday.

"In P2 it's always difficult to go from prime tyres from option tyres and get the best straight away, so I think there is more to come from the driving and maybe from the car a little bit tomorrow. We have a few ideas that we want to work on and let's see if it's going to work tomorrow afternoon."

Grosjean did admit, however, that the team would spend FP3 trying to unlock some more one-lap pace from the car,

"If you work more on qualifying then you work less on the race, and we have seen that from seventh we can get to second or third so it's not the end of the world if you do not qualify very well. But for sure tomorrow morning I think we're going to work a bit more [on qualifying] and the same for the afternoon.

"Hopefully we can not disturb our race pace and get a good qualifying pace; I think this is what we're trying to do so far. Let's see if it works tomorrow."

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