• Belgian Grand Prix

Pre-judging competitiveness 'difficult' - Grosjean

ESPN Staff
August 30, 2012 « Hamilton's future will be decided in 'short order' - Whitmarsh | No Spa secret - Raikkonen »
Lotus will run its new 'double DRS' system this weekend at Spa-Francorchamps © Sutton Images
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Romain Grosjean admits that Lotus could be strong with its new DRS system at Spa but that this season has shown there are no guarantees to competitiveness.

Lotus has been testing its DRS during free practice sessions at both Hockenheim and the Hungaroring, and is expected to run it in the Belgian Grand Prix. While admitting that getting it to work properly could be a distraction during the first practice session this weekend, Grosjean is cautious that even if the new system is effective the rest of the grid could have made similar progress too.

"It could be pretty interesting, but then you always know what you have on your car and you never know what the others are bringing," Grosjean said. "So maybe someone will find one second - but we hope not! It could be a good help for us, we have to see if we can use it if we want and then race it.

"It will be a little bit (of a distraction) during P1, which may not help our P1 but then we have seen a few times that what we are learning in free practice one is not really true for the rest of the weekend so it may mean we avoid getting confused!"

Although the circuit should suit Lotus, Grosjean said there have been a number of occasions where teams have been surprised by their own pace, or lack of it.

"It's always difficult to tell. When we were going to Monte Carlo we were thinking that we would not be so good there because it was a slow speed track and so on and then the car was very good. On paper (Spa) looks good, I hope we will be good but it's not like you can say straight from the beginning that we're going to win or whatever. We have to work, we have to do our job on Friday - if the weather forecast is not too bad - and then see where we are for the qualifying and what we think we can do. Then we have to see the qualy and our race pace."

Despite his cautious outlook, Grosjean added that he didn't expect the Pirelli tyre choice of medium and hard tyres to be a problem for Lotus despite often being less competitive with those tyres in cooler conditions.

"I think we are much better now than in the past. We have seen in Silverstone where it was quite cold that we were working very well on the hard tyres, the medium should be more or less the same so I am not too worried about that. We have a few solutions so let's see."

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