Lotus condemned to the back of the grid until Spain?

Lotus’ “positive” result F1 Team at the Australian Grand Prix despite the double retirement of Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado clearly shows the extent of the problem. The absence of the Esntone team from the Jerez winter tests caused a significant delay in development compared to the other teams while running is essential to optimize reliability. The element blamed for the E22 failures, a failure of the MGU-K, does not prevent the team from fearing another disappointment next week at Sepang. “We have encountered several problems in Australia which we are working on: some come from the chassis and others from the engine block. I know that Renault Sport F1 is working very hard to resolve software and mapping issues”, explains Nick Chester, Deputy Team Principal of Lotus F1 Team.

Nick Chester is convinced that the E22 has sufficient potential to claim good results despite the hierarchy influenced by the new regulations. Gerard Lopez's right-hand man points to the team's difficult start to the season to explain this performance deficit observed in Melbourne. “We know that the E22 has good potential and we need to better exploit the package at our disposal. The lack of running caused problems that we normally would have had to resolve before the first race. Some problems came from the software and the repairs took some time... That said, we left Australia better informed, in particular by better understanding energy management and how to optimize it. »

However, Nick Chester is aware that the delay will be difficult to make up for in the coming weeks as the season has started. The new Lotus F1 Team principal looks set for more difficult weekends with his team. “It's hard to make predictions after the weekend we just had in Australia, especially with the low running time behind us. I clearly hope for improvements in Malaysia and others in Bahrain (April 6) even if the gap between the two events is small (only one week). We would perhaps have to wait until Barcelona (May 11, after the Chinese GP) before having a more stable position and racing at the level we want. »