After a summer break spent enjoying his honeymoon, Romain Grosjean comes back for the second half of the season refreshed and, in his own words, stronger than ever.
What are your thoughts about Spa-Francorchamps?What a track; its fantastic! A superb rollercoaster of a circuit, then theres the added bonus that they speak French meaning its another home race for me after Monaco and Canada. Its going to be good. I hope the upgrades to the car are going to make the difference. If wed had the pace we displayed at Budapest on a more normal track with better places to overtake we could have taken the win. Spa is a more regular circuit with good passing opportunities, so lets see what happens.
Do you feel the team are where they need to be in terms of qualifying?I think were in a pretty good place now. We understand a few things a bit better and if you take the last race we had as a measure we are showing good qualifying and race pace which is what we need to do.
The E20 looks to be cementing itself as a very good race car; how much are you looking forward to driving it through the classic corners ofSpa- Francorchamps?It should fit the E20 pretty well. The second half of the season looks good in terms of how the tracks should suit the car. Hopefully well have everything we need to win races. Im looking forward to it as its a special track; its Spa and also I won the GP2 Series title there last year. Itll be good to be back there again.
The first half of your season seemed to have something of a good weekend / bad weekend pattern. Have you done everything you can to prevent the bad weekends?As a team, were all doing our best to prevent these bad experiences. This year, any grid penalty linked to a gearbox change, any technical failure, any DNF caused by a collision, could lose the team a place in the Constructors Championship. We all know what is at stake. On a personal level, Ive learnt a lot from the first eleven races of the year and Im finding my own balance, finding what is good and what is bad. Ive had time in the summer break to evaluate the first half of the year and hopefully Ill come back stronger. Im still a young driver and three podiums so far this year is a reasonable performance. Ive been fighting with world champions and Im pretty happy with where I am. However, I will never be complacent and Ill try to be a better driver at every single race.
How are you feeling in yourself?It was good to have a holiday, especially for me as it was my honeymoon! It has certainly been an intense first half of the year, so its good to let the body and mind get some rest and Im coming back stronger and ready for action.
Youre currently eighth in the Drivers Championship; what can be achieved by the end of the year?Im just taking it race by race. Its very tight with myself, Jenson [Button] and Nico [Rosberg] all covered by only two points and theres no reason why we cant keep climbing higher. It was good to be back on the podium before the break and I think weve got a better chance than ever to win races, so lets aim for more in the second part of the season
