Dec.22 (GMM) Pirelli's 2011 tyres have improved since Romain Grosjean last tested them, the Swiss-born French driver has declared.

The former Renault race driver, who is 24, was in Bahrain last week until Sunday where the Italian marque continued its test programme with a 2009 Toyota.

The test programme at Sakhir was delayed by a sandstorm, meaning Grosjean had to call off his participation in the latest round of the Andros ice-racing series.

"The programme was quite diverse, including sequences of short and long runs, to understand the behaviour of the compounds," he said.

Grosjean's previous taste of F1's 2011 tyres had been in Italy in September.

"(In Bahrain) I immediately felt an improvement over the tyres that I had used at Monza," he is quoted in Italian by stopandgo.tv.

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