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Lotus aims to finish in first four races
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08 March 2010 @ 14:00 GMT - Roger Loop The new Lotus car will need to be reliable in the early part of the season to score points says technical director Mike Gascoyne. But the car lacks pace and it might be more difficult than expected. The new teams have not shown the speed needed to beat the established teams during February testing, but Gascoyne is not downbeat about it. Lotus focused on reliability of the car before concentrating its pace. "With the best will in the world, none of the new teams are going to score points on merit in the first four races. The only way you are ever going to score points is to finish," Gascoyne said. "Everyone knows that in the first four races, there is always going to be a good opportunity if you finish - so that has to be the number one aim. That's how we approached it because if you put new aero bits on it, you can make it quicker. If you're not finishing you're not going to get anything. The aim was always to do the first four races and have a car that has a chance of finishing," he explained. |
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The car was hit by a few reliability problems in the Barcelona pre-season testing, but Gascoyne thinks the team is in good shape considering how little time they had to prepare for their debut in F1.
"It was nothing major, just normal stuff, to be honest. Nothing that we are worried about. We have far exceeded the mileage that we thought we would do and, starting the project five months ago, the aim was to have a neat simple car that would be reliable for the first four races. It was a pretty tall order, and we've achieved it probably better than we expected we could," he said.