Romain Grosjean says new Lotus F1 chassis felt strange

The Franco-Swiss driver completed only seven laps this morning on the shakedown of Lotus chassis number two.

When the problem was detected the team decided to send it back to its Enstone base and fly out chassis one, which was used at Jerez, to build up for tomorrow.

Although Grosjean did not want to be drawn on the details of the problem, he did confirm that it was obvious when he took to the track.

"It felt quite strange on the steering wheel," said Grosjean. "Both myself and the team picked up the problem at the same time.

"It was a small chassis issue. We sent the chassis back to Enstone to analyse and we will have a new one ready for the morning."

Grosjean is confident that the team will not suffer too much from losing today's running.

Lotus completed more miles than any other team in the Jerez test two weeks ago and he has no doubts that it will still be able to complete its programme at Barcelona.

"Hopefully from tomorrow we can go into our programme," said Grosjean. "We got some good mileage in Jerez and still have three days here and four days next week.

"We can still work on the car. I will still have some good time driving and we will be as ready as we can be for Melbourne."