Spanish GP: Romain Grosjean hampered by Renault sensor failure

The Franco-Swiss driver started from a season's best fifth on the grid and held station there ahead of the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso in Sunday's race at the Circuit de Catalunya, despite locking his brakes heavily at Turn 1 after the start.

Grosjean eventually slumped to eighth as the sensor issue caused his Lotus E22 to lose power, but held on to score the Enstone team's first points of the 2014 campaign.

"It was quite bad in the car," Grosjean said, when asked by AUTOSPORT what had gone wrong.

"It was a sensor failure that brought other issues. I think we were running five or six cylinders depending on what it decided to do.

"We lost it around lap 12. It was creating some other problems losing the quick shift on the gears.

"It was a bit shaky in the car and not very powerful in a straight-line, but generally we can be proud of our weekend and it's good to score the first points."

Renault's track support leader Simon Rebreyend said the French manufacturer would investigate the issue to prevent a recurrence.

"Unfortunately Romain was not able to hold off the Ferraris as a calibration issue caused a loss of power from the first part of the race," he said.

"We need to look at what we can do to correct this in future races."

Grosjean could not be sure if he would have beaten the Ferraris without the power unit issue, but reckoned he could at least have put up a decent fight despite feeling the track conditions did not play to the strengths of the twin-tusk Lotus.

"Of course it would have been nicer to keep the two Ferraris behind and it would have been much harder for them to overtake me [without the issue], but track conditions today were not playing into our hands," he added.

"We suffered a little bit with the temperature being cooler and the track being a little bit green, but in general it's all good and we all deserve a cold one!"