Lotus F1 Team
Lotus's Romain Grosjean admitted his disappointment after failing to make Q3 in Bahrain.
The Frenchman made an error on his first run in Q2 and finished in eleventh place but is seeking inspiration from the team's performance 12 months ago.
"It’s obviously disappointing to miss out on Q3 but it’s just one of those things," said Grosjean.
"There weren’t any issues with the car, we just tried to be a little too brave by doing just one run and unfortunately it didn’t pay off. On the positive side, we’ve found a lot of performance this weekend compared to the first three races and our pace on the prime tyres in Q1 looked very strong. We qualified in similar positions last year and came away with a double podium, so it’s still all to play for."
Kimi Raikkonen will start from eighth place after a messy lap in Q3.
"It wasn’t the easiest qualifying session after a weekend which hasn’t been the easiest so far either," said the Finn. "Yesterday it was difficult at times to find the balance with the car and I found that again today. This morning it felt good and we didn’t do too bad in free practice, but we didn’t quite get it right this afternoon. My lap wasn’t great, but it’s a long race so we’ll just have to see what we can do tomorrow."
