• Monaco Grand Prix - Qualifying

Grosjean rues missed opportunity

Romain Grosjean will start from the second row on Sunday © Press Association

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• Report:
• Schumacher takes Monaco pole before penalty
  

• Race:
• Monaco Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Romain Grosjean

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Romain Grosjean believes he had an opportunity to take pole position for the Monaco Grand Prix but missed out due to a poor final sector.

Grosjean was one of the favourites for pole after a strong showing in all three free practice sessions, and despite struggling in Q2 he looked competitive after the first runs in the top ten shootout. However, he failed to improve substantially on his second run and ended up fifth at the end of Q3, though he will start fourth following pole-sitter Michael Schumacher's penalty. Grosjean highlighted the final sector as the reason he missed out on the front row.

"I lost four and a half tenths I think to the best one (final sector)," Grosjean said. "I haven't looked at the data at the moment, I don't know why but I know this is where we struggled a little bit more since the beginning. Kimi has been a little bit faster in this sector so I will look at the data but I think we are looking at five-hundredths (of a second), so it doesn't make a huge difference. But this is probably where we lost pole position.

"After the first run in Q3 I saw that Rosberg was only six-hundredths quicker than us so I thought 'let's go for it and see what we can do', but it was not enough."

Looking ahead to the race Grosjean said that he hoped the car would be even more competitive on Sunday.

"I think it will be quite tough for the engineers on the pitwall to see what we can do. And for us as well, to give an idea of what we think of the tyres, what phase we are in and how long we can keep them. But then we know that normally our car is pretty good on race pace - even better than on qualy - so let's hope it's going to be a good race."

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