Romain Grosjean admitted that Lotus are nowhere near where they expected to be at this stage of the season, after the Enstone team languished near the back of the grid after Friday’s free practice in Bahrain.

The controversial twin tusk Lotus E22 have had a variety of issues throughout the season so far, although Grosjean and his team-mate Pastor Maldonado did manage to complete 103 laps at Sakhir on Friday.

Maldonado was the quicker of the two, but he was about three seconds off the pace set by Lewis Hamilton in his Mercedes in both of Friday’s free practice sessions.

Following Friday’s practice session, Grosjean said that they were “miles off” where they wanted to be this week, even though the majority of the reliability issues seem to have been fixed.

“We just need more time to understand why in the windtunnel the car looks good and on the track it’s not as good as we hoped,” he told Autosport in Bahrain on Friday.

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