Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen will not run E20 at Mugello circuit – Formula 1 news
Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen will not run the car E20 in the three-day in-season test at Mugello circuit after the rainstorm restricted testing on the first day.
It had been planned that the Finnish driver will be behind the wheel on Wednesday while his teammate, Romain Grosjean will test run the car on Thursday.
However, with the test driver, Jerome d’Ambrosio, the team has only been able to complete 40 laps on the opening day of the test due to unfavourable weather conditions. Therefore, they have decided to allow Grosjean to run the car for the remaining two days
so as to make the best use of the available time.
“The mixed conditions, running intermediates to start and then switching to the medium compound slicks, gave us a good base line for Romain over the next two days,” chief of trackside operations Alan Permane said.
In addition, D’Ambrosio said that they wanted make the necessary evaluations of some updates in the car for which they have planned to cover around 100 laps on the first day. Conversely, they couldn’t complete even half of the scheduled laps.
Therefore, James Allison, the technical director of Lotus said that they have plenty of work to do in the next two days. He added that and they are now focusing to make the most out of the remaining time.
“We've been able to do some of that work in the limited dry running that was available, but there is now a lot more we need to fit in to Wednesday and Thursday. The important thing is we now have base line to build on, so the next two days should be much
more productive,” said Allison.
Lotus team is currently standing on third place in the constructors’ championship with 57 points and are 12 points ahead of Scuderia-Ferrari. Furthermore, they have been considered as one of the most competitive teams in this season.
It will be interesting to mention that the team principal of Lotus, Eric Boullier said that they should not be seen as the second class team anymore as they have the potential to fight for the championship title.
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