- Italian GP - FP2
Grosjean doubts Lotus will score another point in 2014
Romain Grosjean does not think Lotus will score another point this season after the team discovered a fundamental issue with the E22 at the last race in Belgium.
Lotus has struggled all year but looks set for a particularly tricky weekend in Monza after finishing Friday practice in 18th and 20th. Grosjean has scored eight points this year but can't see more coming unless there is a race in unusual circumstances.
"Maybe with a typhoon in Japan," he joked. "You never know!"
Asked seriously if it was possible on performance, he added: "No."
"We are on next year's car. Everything we find we will put into next year's car, but there is no more development for this car."
Grosjean explained that there was a fundamental issue with the car's design.
"We have some problems with the consistency of the aerodynamics of the car. Sometimes you lose 2% of aero balance, sometimes you lose the floor and with Monza levels of downforce it is even harder to predict. It's basically the problem that we've had since day one and here it is just worse because there is less downforce on the car.
"It's something we cannot 100% solve for this year. But it's something we have been aware since not a very long time. At least we have the tools to measure the problems and from there we can get better. It came in Spa that we realised we had a correlation between wind tunnel, track and driver's comments with some areas that were not very good."
Grosjean said the problem had gone undetected in recent years because it was masked by the additional downforce from the car's blown diffuser, which was banned this year.
"No offence to the team because it has been the case for three years, but with the blown diffuser on the car and more downforce on the car we had before it was invisible to everyone. When it is invisible you don't know it, but with the new regulations and harder tyres and less downforce and the loss of the blown diffuser - everything that made us strong in the past - it is now our weakness. It's unfortunate that it happened at that time.
"I think we are behind schedule in terms of development of the car. We had to focus a lot on the power unit and the cooling, and all that put us on the back foot in terms of developing the performance when you focus on other stuff. The car wasn't well born, after three laps in Bahrain I asked if I had a puncture at the rear of the car and they said 'No, everything looks okay'.
"For two years I was able to jump in the car, do a lap, and say 'That car is really good'. This year it wasn't the case. With all the problems of the power unit, we thought that we might come back on track but we did not and we spent a lot of resource and time trying to improve the cooling, which was the main issue. Then it put us completely out of the schedule in terms of development. We tried a few things, but they were not going in the right direction for the problem we had. Now that we know exactly what are the problems we can try to bring new pieces."
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