- Second Bahrain Test - Day Three
Lotus could struggle at first two races - Grosjean
Romain Grosjean says Lotus is heading for the first two races without the preparation it needs to be ready to race at its full potential.
An electrical problem and an issue with the car's MGU-K unit, which recovers energy from the rear axle to supplement power, meant Grosjean completed just 33 laps and was nearly nine seconds off the pace on Saturday. According to Grosjean, the constant barrage of problems since means the team is heading to the first few races unprepared.
"The problem this year is that when you break something it takes between two and three hours to solve the problem," he said. "So if you have three issues in a day that's the end of the day. It is like this for now and, yes, in terms of preparation we are not quite yet ready.
"There are plenty of things we would like to try and do before we go to Melbourne, but tomorrow's session is only a few hours and we have to try to get on top of as much things as we can. It's not going to be perfect for Melbourne, and probably not for Malaysia, but we will do our best and try to do things as good as we can do them to steadily improve everything.
"The list is too long to have ticked everything before Melbourne, and in Melbourne we won't have time to get everything we would like to. At the moment this is the situation and the best we can do is take the most serious one, put that right and then finalise the thing. It's not an ideal situation - far from that - and it's not going to be an easy first few races I guess."
Lotus has had problems with both its chassis and Renault's power units, but Grosjean said most of the issues now stem the V6 turbo and its energy recovery systems.
"Most of it is related to the power unit," he said. "It's quite hard to get the brake-by-wire right and the recovery and release and everything. We have done a few laps where we can see things that are right and see things that are completely wrong. I think the aim for tonight is to get the mapping and all these braking and stuff right. If we do manage to get that we can discover a bit more of the potential of the car."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
