• Hungarian Grand Prix - FP2

Grosjean encouraged by Lotus progress

ESPN Staff
July 26, 2013 « Not crucial to beat Vettel - Raikkonen | Alonso willing to sacrifice race pace »
Romain Grosjean was fifth in FP1 and third in FP2 © Sutton Images
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Romain Grosjean said he was encouraged by Lotus' showing during Friday practice for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Following on from his podium in Germany, Grosjean was quick in FP2 and ended the session in third place behind the two Red Bulls, just 0.153s off the fastest time of the day. Having spent the morning analysing the revised Pirelli tyres, Grosjean said the steps taken in the afternoon should set him up for a strong weekend.

"It was a good day, that's for sure," Grosjean said. "We were mainly focusing on what is the difference with the new Pirelli tyres and to see if we had much to change from the mapping, set-up or whatever we can do. It appears it is not night and day so it helped us in a way that we didn't have to change anything.

"In the morning we had a few question marks and were not sure about things and what we wanted to do. We settled down and took the right decisions for the afternoon, then just changed some set-up items in the car, found what we wanted to have and from there it went pretty well."

With Lotus hoping to use its tyre advantage to run longer on the soft tyre as Grosjean did effectively in Germany, he admitted the early signs were not so promising.

"The life is not as long as we would like. It's not as good as last year, it's a bit different with the front and we do have a little bit of graining but it may disappear with the track getting more rubbered in as was the case in Nurburgring."

Grosjean added that Lotus was not concerned about Red Bull's pace after Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber finished first and second in both sessions.

"They are quick but they are very often very quick so I'm not really surprised by their speed to be honest."

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