So far so good for Lotus
Lotus F1 Team went fastest and one lap shy of furthest in the second test day of four at the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona, Spain today. Romain Grosjean completed a mammoth 124 laps – almost 600 km - including a race distance simulation. He ended the day with a 1min 22.614secs lap – the fastest by over half a second.
Romain Grosjean, Lotus F1 Team Race Driver: “I’m very happy with the car, and it was great that we could still run strongly at the end of the session, even after a long stint. At the start of the day we suffered slightly with tyre degradation, but we changed a few things and this improved as the day went on. Today was the first race distance I’ve completed in a long time and I’m feeling pretty good. No doubt my neck will be a little sore tomorrow, but the rest of me is fine!”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “All in all it’s been a good day. The E20 was once again very reliable, and we completed a lot of laps. Romain wasn’t particularly happy with the car first thing this morning, but we steadily improved it over the day. In the afternoon we completed a full race distance including pit stops. We then went for a couple of setup runs at the end as we had a bit of time left over which was an unexpected surprise. Tyre performance looks good; in particular during the last stint we used a set of hard tyres and managed around 27 laps with very low levels of degradation which is encouraging.”
Chassis: E20-01
Weather: Sunny, air 8-21°C, track 9-30°C
Programme: System checks, temperature monitoring, data correlation, aero-focused runs, set-up changes, race distance run.
Laps Completed: 124
Classification: 1st, 1’22"614
Interruptions: Unscheduled bodywork change
Kimi Räikkönen will get behind the wheel for the final two days at Barcelona. Tomorrow he will work on set-up including evaluating a new aero package.
