Romain Grosjean sees himself as one of four drivers who are worth a shot at a top team following Ferrari’s decision to stick with Kimi Raikkonen.
Raikkonen will be retained for a further season after Ferrari opted not to continue its pursuit of Valtteri Bottas. With Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo also linked with a move to Maranello, Grosjean says he understands why Ferrari decided not to change but he names himself alongside the other three as worthy of an opportunity with a bigger team.
“I think you can clearly understand the stability Ferrari wanted after they made a lot of changes last winter,” Grosjean said. “Kimi is still a really good driver, he was on course for a podium in Budapest and you can understand that they wanted stability. Of course as a racing driver, racing in red must be something special.
“The paddock is quite small because you always have talks here and there, but I think we are a group of young drivers who really want to get a winning car - Ricciardo won last year but if you take Bottas, Hulkenberg, myself - we really want to get somewhere where we can win races. That’s why we love the sport, that’s where we want to be and that’s what we want to do.”
And Grosjean says he is willing to wait for his opportunity having learned a lot during his four consecutive seasons with Lotus so far, though he admits it is frustrating bigger teams are not giving younger drivers a chance.
“I’ve learned that to win a race you have to be patient and not play everything at the first corner! Maybe to win a world title it’s the same thing: patience.
“It’s true it has been quite conservative for quite a few years but I think you need to wait for your time and that’s part of the game. The best thing you can do is to pull out a miracle or good results from where you are and hope that someday your chance comes.”
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