Lotus happy with strong opening at Abu Dhabi
Romain Grosjean went fifth fastest and Kimi Räikkönen set the sixth quickest time - with just 0.032secs separating them - at the end of Friday's two practice sessions at the Yas Marina Circuit this afternoon. The team evaluated new chassis wings and an exhaust update. Both cars ran reliably throughout the two 90 minute practice sessions.
Lotus evaluated an exhaust update on Kimi's car in FP1 and FP2, aimed at reducing the horsepower loss introduced by the Coanda exhaust solution. Romain ran new chassis wings in both sessions and the team consequently decided to continue to use them for the remainder of the weekend.
Kimi Räikkönen, E20-05:
Free practice 1 : P10, 1:45.422, 15 laps
Free practice 2 : P6, 1:42.532, 28 laps
"We were good on Friday in India and we've been strong again here in Abu Dhabi today. We tried a few new parts on the car in both sessions and we have some things to go through before tomorrow. Our lap times seem to be pretty okay so far ; hopefully we can find a little bit more pace for tomorrow in practice and then again for the qualifying session."
Romain Grosjean, E20-03:
Free practice 1 : P14, 1:45.743, 20 laps
Free practice 2 : P5, 1:42.500, 34 laps
"Looking at today's times I think it's possible for us to be battling nearer to those ahead of us this weekend, as I think we can still improve our lap times. I did not drive the best lap of my life with the option tyres today ; with the first set of options you put on you have to go for it, so I think I can still improve a little bit. To get in front of the cars ahead of us will be difficult, but we will try, so why not ? We had some updates that worked well, so we will keep them."
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director:
"We're quite happy with where we are today. We spent the morning on medium tyres, setting up and balancing the cars. Both were reasonable, with the drivers relatively happy. We ran an exhaust update with Kimi in FP1 and went back to the standard setup for the start of the second session. We then did another back to back analysis, so whereas we would normally have done a much longer high fuel run we spent FP2 evaluating this to gain good data and give us a clear picture on where we need to be tomorrow."
