Financial uncertainty holding Lotus F1 team back - Romain Grosjean

The Enstone squad has been working through settling debts with a number of creditors in recent weeks, and faced a winding-up petition in the High Court.

At the same time Renault is evaluating a purchase of the team, and the team's financial situation was thrust further into the spotlight by its late receipt of tyres from Pirelli for the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Grosjean feels that Lotus is stuck in a holding pattern, unable to develop its E23 while waiting for its finances and future to be secured.

"The development hasn't been as good as we would have wanted," he said.

"We have a lot of ideas in the pipeline, in the windtunnel, the design of it is working very well, but at the minute we cannot bring them on track.

"On the other hand, when you are thinking about selling the team, you won't put any more money in, because it's all loss.

"I think we are in a bit of a waiting situation, and hopefully soon we know, and we can move ahead.

"The baseline is good, from where we came back last year, it's a huge step.

"So it shows that we understand the problem and can put [solutions] on the paper.

"But after that it's clear that we needed to move forward and from that good baseline put some performance on the car, and we couldn't achieve that."

While the development race continues around Lotus, including Force India's introduction of its B-spec car at Silverstone, the team has fallen down the midfield order.

"It's frustrating for everyone," Grosjean said.

"The engineers would love to create their new ideas to put on the car and see if it works.

"The driver would love the performance to get a car that goes quicker and quicker.

"Of course the situation is not ideal right now, but I think it's a bit of an in-between game and should be better soon."

'COMMERCIAL ISSUE' BEHIND TYRE DELAY

Lotus' allocation of tyres was delivered to the team's garage one hour before the start of Friday's first practice session, instead of on Thursday as is normal.

Following the regular tyre-warming procedures, Pastor Maldonado and reserve driver Jolyon Palmer missed the bulk of FP1.

"It's just a commercial issue that was resolved," Pirelli's Paul Hembery said on Friday evening.

"It happens in life, we haven't had any other indication that there will be other issues so going forward we expect things to go smoothly."