New front wing to blame for Grosjean's handling woes in China

The team had briefly tried the new wing on Friday, but decided to switch back to the older spec after Esteban Gutierrez was sidelined by a brake issue.

The thinking was that, with less track time between the two cars, it would be better for Grosjean to switch to standard spec.

However, with parts at a premium, the new front wing was designated as Grosjean's spare for the race. It was duly pressed into service, but it was not a good match for the existing set-up, leaving the Frenchman struggling.

“We used the new parts on Romain's car on Friday, but we didn't learn anything,” team boss Guenther Steiner told Motorsport.com.

“When we had the problem with Esteban we decided to stop developing the car. We needed to get to a base set-up, do what we know how to do.

"We did one run but we said no, we are too far off, and now we only have one car we don't do it. And so we stopped.

“However we put the wing on the car in the race because that was our spare wing. But it wasn't set-up for the rest of the car, the car wasn't balanced, we didn't know enough about it.

"The whole race for Romain was compromised. He wasn't happy with his car the whole weekend.”

Steiner did add there was a positive: “Esteban was pretty happy with it, he showed that he deserves to be here as well, which is good for his morale. Hopefully at the next one we have a better Friday with both cars.”