• German Grand Prix - Qualifying

Grosjean confident on new tyres

Romain Grosjean secured his best qualifying result of the season at the Nurburgring © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• German Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Romain Grosjean

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Romain Grosjean says his improved qualifying performance has something to do with the updated Pirelli rear tyres.

Qualifying in fifth place is Grosjean's best result of the season so far and his highest qualifying position since last year's Japanese Grand Prix. With warm temperatures suiting his Lotus Grosjean said he is hoping it will continue to help the team during the race on Sunday.

"I'm pretty happy, the best qualifying so far for a long time," Grosjean said. "It's good to be at the front once again. It could have been a little bit better; sector one was not brilliant, I struggled a little bit with the front tyres to get them working as I would have liked, but in general I think it's a good result for the team. The temperature is sort of helping us to get everything together so tomorrow should be a good day, so hopefully it will disadvantage the others and advantage us!"

Asked what else had contributed to his good performance, Grosjean said he was happier with the new rear tyres Pirelli has supplied at the Nurburgring.

"The first good point here is that we don't have only one lap in free practice to get the time and then everything is not really relevant anymore. We had a few laps to get an idea of the car balance which is helping quite a lot to set-up the car, because the new rear tyres the first time we tested them in Canada I quite liked them to be honest; I think they are more a race tyre than the previous one. Then it's just the fronts which are always a bit tricky and hard to get feelings from, so hopefully when we go back to last year's construction it will help."

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