Lewis Hamilton says Lotus E20 looks impressive and explains MP4-27 woes – Formula 1 news
Lewis Hamilton said that the new Lotus E20 looks very impressive.
Raikkonen drove the new Lotus and straight away impressed with the pace of the car. He was able to set the fastest lap time of the day. The lap was the fastest from the 2012 editions of the cars running on the grid until Raikkonen’s teammate Romain Grosjean
took over the E20 and bettered the lap time set by Raikkonen.
After three days of impressive running from the Lotus camp, other drivers have also noticed the good pace of the car and Hamilton was naturally impressed as well.
“I think you can see the Red Bull looks quick, the Lotus looks ... impressive ... you don't know what it's up to but it looks pretty quick, but you never know what fuel loads people are on. But I think we've been pretty aggressive with our fuel loads,” he
said.
Hamilton set the fourth fastest time on his McLaren when he took over from Jenson Button after two days of testing from last year’s star of the team. Button clearly was having some trouble with the car.
“I was a bit cautious going in to today just looking at the times Jenson was experiencing the last couple of days I wasn't really sure where we would be today but when I got the new tyres on I was able to extract the grip quite easily and felt positive,”
said Hamilton.
Hamilton though said that it is a new car and it is quite unpredictable at this point. The team is working out a good setup for the car and there are still a lot more testing still left. He said that the car is definitely an evolution of its predecessor
but with some shortcomings.
The car has lost downforce because of the exhaust blown diffuser being banned. He also predicted that there will be a lot of tyre degradation in 2012 because of the new regulations applied. One thing that the Brit said was better in the new car was braking,
he said that the car was much more stable under braking.
Hamilton had a poor season in 2011 as he faced quite a few issues both on and off the track. He will be looking to change all that and start the 2012 season competitively. The season will begin with the Australian Grand Prix scheduled be held on March 18,
2012.
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