Mat Coch writes:

Throughout 2012, Romain Grosjean built a reputation. He'll likely spend his career trying to outgrow it, but in Australia he began taking the first tentative steps towards repairing the self-inflicted damage.

It wasn't a spectacular race, nor did he feature on the podium, but that was exactly what the Frenchman needed; a quiet race, away from the headlines, in which he could simply focus on the task at hand.

Indeed, the problems which held him back may have helped stifle his natural exuberance, focussing him for a more composed race.

A set-up car issue left Grosjean hopelessly short of downforce and was not picked up until the he was driving to the grid. With the car already in parc ferme it was by then too late. "It was not a set-up mistake it was something that didn't wind up on the car for some reason," he admitted. "We were missing a few things and that meant the set up was not exactly what we thought it was. Hopefully the issue's solved and from there we can recover our downforce."

Lotus teammate Kimi Raikkonen won the race on a two-stop strategy, versus his rivals' three-stops. Had things been as expected on Grosjean's car it's plausible he too would have featured strongly among the results, rather than coming home tenth. Both drivers were on the same strategy; a longish supersoft stint before switching to mediums. "It just didn't turn out the same," Grosjean lamented.

"When the car goes well and everything goes perfect it's almost easy to finish a race," he added. "When the car is very hard to drive you try to do everything you can to make it good, then it's a much harder race.

"It was a tough race. But I didn't do any mistakes, I finished it and that's the best I could do."

"It's one of those races when I finished it I was disappointed with the result but happy with myself," he concluded.

Perhaps, given his track record, a difficult but incident free race to tenth will ultimately do him more good than a nervous drive to the podium.