Lotus wants to keep Grosjean for 2013, but still needs to think about it
While the Lotus driver is still waiting to know what his future holds, the Enstone team wants to take their time to reflect, even though they express the desire to keep the Frenchman in their ranks. Thus, while Gérard Lopez believes that drivers as fast as Grosjean are not common, Eric Boullier, manager and boss of the Geneva native, thinks that he should not be counted out.
Of the three French drivers involved in Formula 1 this season, only Romain Grosjean remains uncertain about his future in the pinnacle of motorsports and more specifically with Lotus. Indeed, while Kimi Räikkönen has been confirmed for several weeks, the Enstone team is slow to confirm the Geneva native in his role: “For now, we are giving ourselves a few days or even a few weeks of reflection,” explained Eric Boullier this weekend, manager of Romain Grosjean and director of the Lotus F1 Team. “His retirement in Brazil does not work in his favor. This season, there have been some not so great things and some exceptional things. For a kid, you shouldn’t write him off, he made three podiums. Not everyone can do that…”
The assessment of Romain Grosjean’s 2012 season is indeed highly contrasted. Achieving three podiums in Bahrain, Canada, and Hungary, and outqualifying his experienced teammate 10 times out of nineteen matchups, the Frenchman struggled to realize his potential in races, collecting less than half the points of the 2007 world champion, retiring eight times, five due to collisions and once due to a driving error. This weekend again, the Lotus driver started from a distant 18th place after a collision in qualifying with Pedro de la Rosa’s HRT before seeing his race prematurely end in the wall: “There are many lessons and positive things to take from this season. A lot of progress has been made,” analyzes Romain Grosjean. “Now, at this end of the season, things didn’t want to fall into place. It’s time for it to stop, and for me to take two months off. I hope I will be here next year, and if I am, I hope to succeed in my second year as I have throughout my career.”
His future? It’s precisely being discussed at Lotus where Gérard Lopez, the team’s owner, wishes to keep his driver even if he acknowledges that only Romain Grosjean holds the keys to unlock his contractual situation: “What we can note about Romain for now is his speed; he’s among the fastest drivers in F1. He understands the car well, knows how to get the maximum out of it, but he hasn’t done everything we asked, especially in terms of consistency,” admits the Luxembourg businessman to the newspaper *L’Équipe*. “That doesn’t change the fact that drivers with Romain’s speed are rare. He needs to channel this ability to perform to achieve more results. He should have had a lot more points, and we could have fought for the 3rd place in the constructors’ championship. The reason he’s not yet confirmed for 2013 is that we haven’t had the chance to sit down and discuss it together with the engineers, and then we’ll see. My desire is to have Romain in the car, but it depends more on him than on me.”
Thus, while Romain Grosjean no longer needs to prove his talent and speed, whether with Lotus or to the public, it is a different matter altogether for his mental management and race intelligence, which have been severely tested in recent months. Indeed, in Formula 1, it’s not so much about being fast as it is about scoring points…
