While Kimi Raikkonen takes the spotlight with a win in Australia and podium in China, Romain Grosjean is struggling to get his season going and Lotus have admitted that the fault is not that of their French driver.
Speaking ahead of the Bahrain GP weekend Lotus technical boss James Allsion revealed, “The truth is that it’s certainly not Romain causing the problem. Romain is fast, smooth and good at looking after tyres, however we have not yet managed to give him a consistent car that lets him bring his talent to bear.”
He added, “It’s not him; it’s that we haven’t got it quite right for him yet and what seems to be clear from Kimi’s weekends is that the car is a tricky little beast to get just right. We have managed that with Kimi in two of the three races and we need to make sure we’ve giving Romain all the opportunity to shine as well.”
Allison said that the driving styles of their drivers differ, so a setup solution for Raikkonen is unlikely to work for Grosjean.
“First of all, both drivers don’t want the exact same thing out of the car. Kimi has a driving style which uses the front tyres a little heavier than Romain, while Romain uses his rear tyres slightly more than Kimi, so they need a different set up anyway,” expaliend Allison.
“Secondly, we’re not completely certain that even if we were to bolt the same setup onto both cars that we would get the same result in any case, so it’s not just as straightforward as saying we’ll put the same set up on and everything will be fine.” (GP247)