The Frenchman, who was three seconds off the pace in FP1 and FP2 after finishing the first two races of the season in fifth and sixth, said the front tyre on his car felt like "a piece of wood".

"I think the Pirelli tyre limits have been ridiculous today for tyre pressure and everything is just up to the roof and the cars are undriveable," Grosjean said.

"Out of the garage, front tyre pressure of 23 psi, which is absolutely ridiculous. The rear is 21.5, so we are allowed on the rear some high limit, but not much on the front.

"You just don't get any feeling, it's like a piece of wood - it's just not driveable. Back in the day we were four, five psi lower than that."

Grosjean, who said the front tyre pressure contributed to an increased number of lock-ups and made him feel like he was driving with "oil on track", conceded: "Maybe it's us more than others but if we didn't have a limit, we would never run there.

"I think recently we already had quite dramatic limits, but when we were on 21-20, that still gives you a bit of a limit - it's still very high, back in Michelin times it was 15-13, in 2012 people were 16-18.

"But now we imagine we're on track for it's 26 at the front and 23 at the rear, it's almost a road car.

"It would be good if we could change it a little bit, 'cause it doesn't feel like a racing car."

Tyre pressures not set in stone - Pirelli

Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery said it was too early to judge if the mandatory minimum tyre pressures that had been laid down for this weekend were too high.

“Traction was certainly a premium, it is true to say,” he said. “We are doing the post-session debrief now so we will know at the end of the day where we are with that.”

When asked if there was scope for Pirelli to alter the limits for tomorrow, he replied: “The process is that on the Friday evening, we take the data and telemetry and compare that to the pre-race simulation. And then we verify if the prescriptions we have got are correct.”

Addtional reporting by Oleg Karpov and Jonathan Noble

