Lotus very satisfied with Prost after first day of testing

A successful first day’s running at the Abu Dhabi Young Driver Test saw French driver Nicolas Prost step into the race winning E20. Nicolas completed a full engineering and aerodynamic programme during a trouble-free day, gaining valuable data for the team in the process.

Nicolas Prost, E20-01
"Today was my first real experience of a Formula 1 car. I had driven the R30 before, however it’s now two years old and uses different tyres so it’s quite different to my experience today. I’m obviously very happy and I’m impressed by the car; it’s a massive step up even from the R30.

"For me it was like a real test driver’s day and we trialled a lot of parts. We only worked on the hard tyres, so were obviously not looking for pace, but we have been analysing the data and I have been comparing myself with Kimi and Romain’s telemetry. Obviously I’m missing a bit in some corners, but others are quite good. For my first day I think it’s very positive and I did the job the team asked of me, so it’s been a very good day."

Simon Rennie, Race Engineer: "For the first day of testing we ran Nico in the car and mainly focused on running some new aerodynamic developments. It was therefore quite a demanding programme for Nico in terms of procedures, but he managed them all very well. We worked our way through the programme and completed everything we hoped to get out of the day; Nico did a great job.

"We only used three sets of hard tyres; as we had discovered from the race, the degradation at this circuit is very low and they were therefore ideal for completing our aero work. We focused on testing parts that take quite a while to change, meaning it is impossible to gain good data on them during a race weekend. We have not done a huge number of laps, however they have been laps where we have gathered very good data. We were not looking for performance, rather consistent runs from Nico which he did well, so all in all it’s been a very good day."