Lotus hit by off-track uncertainty, says Grosjean

The tyres issue was the latest in a series of troubles for Lotus who faced a High Court winding-up order earlier this month.

Already peeved at the fact that most Friday mornings he has to watch Jolyon Palmer driving his auto, whilst Pastor Maldonado, courtesy of his PDVSA funding has exclusive use of his own, Romain Grosjean was further frustrated this morning when money issues left his team without tyres.

Chief executive Matthew Carter has said repeatedly that Lotus are not for sale despite persistent paddock speculation linking them to a possible Renault takeover, with the French manufacturer weighing up its future in the sport.

The Lotus team were held up in the first free practice session because of their late delivery of Pirelli tyres, meaning the team spent the first thirty minutes of the session preparing and warming up the tyres, delaying their running program.

The ongoing financial uncertainty, Grosjean says, is not helping the development of the E23 auto.

“The development hasn’t been as good as we would have wanted”, he said. “The situation is not ideal right now but it’s a bit of an in-between game and it should be better soon”.

“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 can not bring them on track”. So it’s a bit of waiting situation, and hopefully soon we’ll know more and move ahead.

The 29-year-old Grosjean, now in his fourth season with Lotus, secured the last of his eight podium finishes when he finished second at the United States GP, the penultimate race of the 2013 season.

Grosjean said on Thursday that he hoped the stories he had heard were true and that he would be tempted to stay with the team if Renault took control and put four-time world champion Alain Prost in charge. “The engineers love to create these ideas and put them on the cars”.

“The driver would love the performance to get a auto that goes quicker and quicker”.