Lotus misjudged the pace of soft tyres: Romain Grosjean

Romain Grosjean

Lotus driver Romain Grosjean has pointed out the team’s misjudgment of the pace increase of soft tyres as the reason for its exit in Q1 session for the Indian Grand Prix.

Grosjean was knocked out after the first qualifying session after his time of 1:26.577 was not able to hold up to the pace of the other cars eventually giving him a 17^th place in the grid.

“Obviously it wasn’t far [away from making the cut]. The times didn’t work out as expected in the afternoon. Sebastian Vettel lapped only six tenths quicker than what my lap is, which is the time difference we have seen so far,” he said.

“I got traffic in the last corner; I lost something like a tenth, tenth and a half. That’s more or less about it. The car was quite difficult to drive. We did [one minute] 26.5. 0.1, 0.2 [less time] it would have been possible but it was not good enough to go to Q2,” he added.

The finish is the Frenchman’s second worst in the season and he added that he will be looking for a jump start despite his low position.

“You never know – we’ve seen Kimi starting P13 and finishing P3 in Singapore. For sure I will not lead the race in the first corner unless I have a big jump start .We try to get the best strategy we can get. Option tyre is clearly not a good tyre for here. They run out of grip after one lap, even sometime before. So for sure we don’t want to spend much time on them. We’ll see what tyre we start on and just go for maximum attack in the first few laps and try to get some places,” he said.