Grosjean receives gearbox penalty

Lotus driver Romain Grosjean has been handed a five-place grid penalty for this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix because of a gearbox change.

The Frenchman lost fourth gear during the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago, and the team has decided that they can’t fix it sufficiently.

Grosjean didn’t compete in free practice one today, and admits that he is already behind this weekend.

He said: "It does affect you quite a lot in terms of preparation for the weekend. FP1 is normally when you test new aero parts and you can do a back-to-back and you know that you do three runs of five or six timed laps and you assess what's the best part for the weekend.

"Then you get a first idea of the car and then you can do a set-up change for FP2, prepare your diff map, your brake map and then go into FP2.

"When you only start in FP2 you've got five timed laps on prime [tyre], three timed laps on option and then you go into your long runs so it's much harder to choose what is the right set-up.

"Then you can make some changes overnight but again, the Saturday morning is the not the same fuel load and under the same track conditions. It does affect you, I believe that's why not everyone is doing it.

"The more time you spend in the car the better it is, especially when you have very little testing in a year."

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