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Most important weekend yet - Grosjean

Romain Grosjean thinks Lotus could be challenging Red Bull soon © Sutton Images

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Romain Grosjean insists this weekend is crucial for Lotus as the season enters the last flyaway race before the teams return to Europe.

Lotus is still playing catch up with fellow Renault customers Red Bull and Toro Rosso, while the Mercedes-powered teams are even further away. With the return to Europe allowing work in factories and another in-season test in Barcelona, Grosjean feels it is crucial for Lotus to return home on the back of a strong result after finishing 12th in Bahrain.

"Hopefully this weekend is much better," Grosjean said. "It's difficult to set an objective for the weekend, of course I would like to tell you we want to fight for podiums and wins and so on, but it's not the case. First we need a trouble-free weekend and then we go from there.

"We have a few ideas of what we can try on the car to make it better because we do have some work to do on that side. I know Renault has been working hard to bring some more software and updates and performance in the engine, so hopefully that will help a little bit and then we will see [how we can do]."

"Of course, it's always easier when the car goes back to the factory for the guys, as you can bring new pieces. There is testing as well, and at the moment we need track time to understand exactly the correlation with what we have with the wind tunnel and everything else to make the car quicker."

Grosjean is still refusing to be drawn into comment about when Lotus will be back competing at the front, though he admits it could be sooner rather than later if things go well in China.

"After Australia I did not know when it was going to be. I still stay on that point. Of course I would like it to be Barcelona; [if in China] everything goes perfect and the car is brilliant, maybe [in Spain] we can fight with the Red Bulls on the same power unit but I don't know.

"The only thing I know is that we are working as hard as we can to understand everything and what's going with the E22, why we don't get exactly what we thought we could get. There are a few ideas we want to test this weekend, hopefully we can move in the right direction and move from there."

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