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'Testing lap times mean very little' - Grosjean

ESPNF1 Staff
May 2, 2012 « Schumacher happy with latest updates | Updates must deliver - Massa »
Romain Grosjean set the fastest time at Mugello on Wednesday © Sutton Images
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Lotus driver Romain Grosjean has warned against reading too much into his fastest lap at the second day of testing at Mugello.

Grosjean clocked an identical time to Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi to top the timesheets and had a problem-free day as the team worked through a number of solutions. The result comes a week after both Lotuses finished on the podium in Bahrain, but Grosjean said he was not drawing any conclusions from his time on Wednesday.

"It's always good to end the day on top, but we have to remember that in testing lap times mean very little," he said. "Having said that, the car felt great and I was very comfortable from the start. This test gives us an opportunity to try things that we wouldn't have time to do during a race weekend, so hopefully it'll help us to keep pushing forward.

"We've done a lot of setup work today, and for sure we'll need to take some time to look through all the data and analyse what we need to focus on tomorrow, but it's a good baseline for the final day."

Lotus trackside operations director Alan Permane was also pleased with how the car was running and revealed that Grosjean's time was not set on low fuel.

"Today we were concentrating on different suspension setups, so we had a fairly major change over lunch which took a couple of hours. We've got some good data from this which we'll need to sit down and assess tonight to decide what our strategy will be for tomorrow; i.e. whether we re-test or stick with what we've got. The car is working very well here; we've run a variety of medium and high fuel loads as we would at a race weekend to assess the effects of the suspension change, and we're pleased with what we've seen. Overall, a positive day."

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