mith wrote:Thanks for your replies.
It might be possible, that updates actually worked in China, but because of the very unstable weather conditions it was impossible to asses them properly.
Alan Permane on the China updates & Bahrain:
"We knew from Malaysia we were competitive," says Lotus engineering chief Alan Permane. "We were very uncertain of our aero numbers in China, and we were very uncompetitive on Friday, so we were cautious and took it off."
"We were rather spooked on Friday in China by the pace of the car," adds technical director James Allison. "We were very uncompetitive on Friday morning, only because our tyres were just too cold – they weren't in the window. Just out of total caution we went back to a baseline.
"We had used it on both cars in the morning, but we were rubbish, so for Saturday we went back to the other package. For Bahrain we had a chance to see that it was working alright.
"It's just part of the upgrades we're going to keep bringing. It's probably worth one and a half tenths, something like that – but you know what the grid's like now."
Only Raikkonen had the latest floor on Friday in Bahrain, and it was immediately apparent that it was working well. Kimi was ninth in FP1 and on paper an unspectacular 13th in FP2 – half a second off ninth-placed Romain Grosjean in that session – but the team knew what fuel loads both guys had been running, and after doing the numbers was hugely encouraged.
"We spent Friday morning looking at aerodynamics and stuff that we didn't think had worked in Shanghai," says Permane. "We looked at it closer and in a few different ways and managed to convince ourselves that we were happy with it.
"Kimi had the new floor fitted on Friday, and that was a major part of our upgrade. Romain stayed with the old floor, and Kimi was much more competitive. That gave us the first clue, and the aero numbers looked good.
"Friday afternoon we basically spent on high fuel. We did one run on low-ish fuel, but the rest of the session was done on high fuel. We were actually surprised; we knew then we had a good car on high fuel.
"It almost looked too good, and we were worried that we didn't have enough fuel and other people had more.
"We calculated stuff out and looked at the quickest Mercedes lap – because they were very fast on their long-run pace. We worked out what fuel they were on and we were fairly confident then."
The decision was made to give Grosjean the new floor for Saturday and he soon found an improvement in FP3 and qualifying, and in fact looked more competitive than his team-mate.
"We had the new floor on both cars for Saturday," says Permane. "We spent the morning doing our normal qualifying prep. From Friday to Saturday Romain went from being three tenths behind to three or four tenths in front of Kimi.
above quote/s is from Permane & Allison via AutoSport
Extreme diffuser for E20
Lotus and maybe the car that has the most extreme diffuser extraction profile with the end cut at 45 degrees, following a solution initiated by Brawn GP in 2009. This creates a transverse tunnel that carries air into areas of low pressure at the bottom of the rear tyres, making more efficient the central areas of the diffuser