Lotus team boss Eric Boullier believes E20 can challenge the leaders – Formula 1 news
Lotus team boss Eric Boullier says Lotus will stand up to Red Bull and McLaren in the upcoming 2012 season.
Lotus had a poor season in 2011 and wanted to make amend in the upcoming 2012 season. The way the team has been putting in the hard work and the strong performances on display so far in the pre-season tests, it is evident that Lotus definitely will be among
the top five teams.
Boullier though believes that Lotus will give a stiff challenge to leaders of the board Red Bull and McLaren. The Brit driver Lewis Hamilton also praised of the new Lotus and said that the car has pace and reliability and will be a handful on the grid.
Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen has been showing good speeds during the pre-season tests and topped with the best lap times on several occasions during the testing days. Although Raikkonen has played down reading too much into his top times, it is still evident
that Lotus has a come up with a car that has the pace and reliability to stand up to the best.
“The good thing is that the car was good from day one out of the box. The car itself has been very well designed and it is clearly a step up over the past years. That has allowed us to put a lot of miles behind us at Jerez, and then we had a little bit of
a setback [at the second test], missing the four days, and [the final test] I think was not bad,” Boullier said.
“We had to make some compromises on the testing because we were missing four days, so we had to combine eight days with four days, but all in all it was not bad,” he said.
Lotus are going into the season with two drivers that have not had much track time in the sport recently. Raikkonen comes back into the sport after a two-year hiatus while his teammate Romain Grosjean is in his debut season.
The situation makes Lotus dark horses going into the season and thus there will not be much pressure on them, which might give them the impetus they need to succeed.
Tags: