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Grosjean confident of clean start to 2013

Romain Grojean received a race ban for causing a huge accident at Spa © Sutton Images

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• Drivers:
• Eric Boullier
• |
• Romain Grosjean

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Romain Grosjean believes an incident-free start to the season will mean he can win back the trust of his fellow drivers and put the incidents of 2012 firmly behind him.

Grosjean was involved in a number of high-profile accidents at the start of grands prix last year and was suspended from the Italian Grand Prix after triggering a pile-up at Spa-Francorchamps. However, he is confident he can put those incidents firmly in his past and regain the trust of his fellow drivers with a clean start to 2013.

"It will happen if I do my job, I do good races, no incidents and after four or five races I score good results they'll see that I'm OK," he told ESPN. "I think they know it, they know well that I've been winning championships so I think last year has been a little bit psychological. I made some mistakes, sometimes I was a bit unlucky and it turned out that it was a big story. It was lucky that nobody was hurt in the crash in Spa but I wasn't alone on that start. Anyway, I've been working a lot trying to change the risk management and see things a bit differently."

Lotus team principal Eric Boullier said he is confident Grosjean has addressed his issues and will make a better start to 2013.

"He is quiet, he is focused and you can feel he's made a first step in where we want him to go and in the way he is handling himself, so I'm happy," he said. "He Iooks more confident and more focused. He does exactly what the engineers expected of him. It's very good. I think it was all the work he did behind the scenes, it looks like it's paying off.

"We need to see how he is under race conditions. I don't see any reason, if he's back now behaving like he should be and trusting in himself, why he shouldn't be fine."

However, Grosjean admitted that he had feared for his position at the team as he waited to find out if Lotus had renewed his contract over the winter.

"It's not the easiest nights I've had! It was long but I had a lot of discussions with Gerard Lopez and the team and that was good. That was trying to help us understand how to move forward, and when I finally got the phone call that was good."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.