(Eric Vargiolu DPPI for Renault Sport F1)
Romain Grosjean appears to be getting frustrated with his Lotus F1 Team. Following a fantastic season in 2013 which saw the Frenchman finish on the podium six times helping the Enstone based outfit secure fourth in Constructors championship the team have struggled so far in 2014 and have yet to score a point in the opening three Grand Prix of the season.
The squad have suffered various reliability issues with the new E22 and this continued during yesterday's final day of running in Bahrain when Grosjean was forced to stop following 16 laps following a problem with the Renault power unit. It was the second day in succession that the team had an issue with the power unit after Maldonado was forced to stop on Tuesday with a similar issue.
The team won the opening race of the season in Melbourne last season however fast forward 12 months and this season neither Grosjean nor Maldonado finished the opening race of the season due to an identical issue with the Energy Recovery System.
In Malaysia the team had another difficult race where Pastor Maldonado failed to finish the race with a power unit failure while Grosjean managed to finish the race in 11th place just ahead of former team mate Kimi Raikkonen just narrowly missing out on a point's finish.
In Bahrain last weekend the team managed to get both cars home in 12th and 14th place respectively which was the first time this season that the team had managed to complete a full race distance with both cars in the same Grand Prix.
However following testing in Bahrain this week, Grosjean was clearly unhappy saying:
'I have to say that these two days have been quite tough on all of us. We were hoping for more, but again they say China or Barcelona will be a good step forward. Let's see.
He went on to say:
'Today we did some aero tests with hopefully some good results that we can understand for China, a few things that we can maybe redesign, and then we just have to believe that Renault will be capable of bringing better performance and reliability because today was just not acceptable'
The team will be hoping that the updates that they bring to the car for the start of the European leg of the season will enable them to their season back on course so that they can salvage something following their tough start to the season. After their great season in 2013, it is a real shame to see the team struggling at the moment.
©Ben Johnston 2014
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