The Frenchman said that his pace-setting 1m22.614s lap, which was set on a short run on soft Pirellis late on, was a result of "KERS, DRS and enough fuel to do some laps."

But of far more importance to him was the long-run pace of the new E20 following a race simulation on a mixture of soft and hard compounds during the middle of the afternoon.

A 59-lap stint, separated only by pitstops, featured a particularly impressive 24-lap run during which his laptimes dropped off by only two seconds.

"It [the race simulation] was pretty interesting," he said. "It's a long time since I've been that long in a car.

"With the Pirelli you can really play with your driving style to save the tyres, so it was good to know what the result of my driving style was on the tyres.

"It was pretty consistent and good. I'm happy the tyres were quite consistent and the reliability was good. It's very encouraging for Melbourne."

Despite his Lotus appearing to suffer from mid-corner snap-oversteer on worn tyres, Grosjean said this was not a concern and that the car has retained its strong handling characteristics throughout pre-season testing.

'When the tyres get tired you have either the fronts through getting used from the fast corners, or the rears from the traction in the slow corners, and when the car is playing everywhere, it's quite difficult," he added.

"But that's just the tyres, and that point is the same for everyone. I saw a Ferrari [Fernando Alonso's] during my run and he was struggling too, so I'm not worried.

"The main thing is that we've been to the factory, looked at the data and seen where I can improve myself and where we can improve the car, and we've done those things.

"Hopefully we can give [team-mate] Kimi [Raikkonen] and his engineer some good feedback and then they can take this and use it to try some items to make sure we're in the best shape for Melbourne."

Autosport.com