• Jerez Test, Day Two

Grosjean's optimism growing at Lotus

Romain Grosjean was quickest on day two by 0.785s © Sutton Images

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Romain Grosjean admitted that he is feeling optimistic at the potential of the Lotus E21 having been "a bit cautious" on Tuesday.

Having been third quickest on the opening day of testing, Grosjean was quickest on day two as he set a time 0.6s quicker than Button had managed on Tuesday - a time that Felipe Massa had described as "incredible". Grosjean said that Lotus hadn't been chasing lap times, just working through its own schedule, but confirmed the time came on the soft tyres and was encouraging.

"I think we kept our program for what we wanted to see," Grosjean said. "We tested the hard, medium and soft tyres; went quick on the softs in the afternoon which was a good lap time. We tested a few options on the set-up that we wanted to do and it reacted quite well, sometimes things that we were not expecting worked but it's always good to have a first idea for the future of the testing and it's good now to have Kimi in the car that can give us his feedback.

"The car is good to drive, I was a bit cautious yesterday when I said it but feelings are better than last year and I think there is some more work that we're going to do on the car to improve some areas that we know we can improve for now. But generally for a first try like that I am very happy with the car."

Grosjean was keen to play down the significance of his pacesetting lap time however.

"It doesn't mean much to be honest. We stay on our plan, a good surprise with the soft tyre to get it working pretty well but generally all day long we followed what we had to do and the car felt good so there's nothing crazy about that time it's just us working and doing our own business."

With Grosjean entering his second season with Lotus, he admitted that even outside the car he had noticed a clear step forward.

"Last year I discovered everything. When you used do a GP2 test day there is nobody at the end of the day to ask you a question and here there is a lot of people! That's the first bit. But I think it's easier where we wanted to start already with the car, the baseline and work with the engineers. I kept 80% of the same staff and we know each other very well now so that's already a big difference to start the season."

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