Prost occupied with aerodynamic testing for Lotus
Nico Prost completed the first day of running at the Silverstone Young Driver Test for Lotus F1 by setting the eighth fastest time of the day in the team’s E21. Nico ran through a programme of aerodynamic assessments over the course of a glorious day of sunshine at the Northamptonshire circuit.
Prost completed 72 laps in the E21-03, setting a fastest time of 1:34.810.
Nico Prost: “It was a very positive day where we completed everything in the itinerary. We only ran with the hard tyres today; focusing on comparison assessments of the latest parts for the car as well as aero work which meant we didn’t make any setup changes. Considering this our pace was pretty good. I’m happy that I’ll be running again on Friday when hopefully we’ll be able to look for a bit more performance, but the important focus of this test is to complete a programme aimed at putting Kimi and Romain in the best position to be able to win the Hungarian Grand Prix.”
Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “Nico got our programme off to a strong start with fast and consistent laps all day meaning we have plenty of data to analyse overnight. We had a few niggles to sort in the morning, but were soon in our stride running with large aero-logging rakes and other data gathering equipment. We’ve evaluated some new updates which are looking promising and we have a good initial impression of Pirelli’s latest tyres. Tomorrow is Davide’s turn on driving duties and we expect another strong day of running. Looking to Friday, in a change to our original plan, we will now run Nico again. Once the details of what race drivers were allowed to do here became apparent, we would have only been able to conduct a very limited programme with Kimi. By running Nico again we can build on the work already carried out and hopefully be in the best position to develop the E21 ahead of Budapest.”
Davide Valsecchi will take over tomorrow with Nico returning to the car on Friday in a change to the original programme – which had seen Kimi Räikkönen set to take the wheel – made following clarification of FIA rules stipulating that race drivers would be unable to test anything other than tyres.
