Lotus technical director James Allison confirms Spa DDRS debut plans – Formula 1 news
Lotus Technical director James Allison has confirmed that the team will be pushing to get the new double DRS aka DDRS device at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Lotus have had a good season so far and have been looking good to penetrate the top three slots of the standings. The team has not ruled out the title bids of the season as well. Even though the DDRS has been confirmed to be banned for the 2013 season the
team earlier stated that they will still be developing it until the end of the season.
Lotus believes that the cost of developing is not so high for them to let it go even though it will not be existent in 2013. It shows just how badly the team wants to excel in the season to get the desired results.
Lotus experimented with the device during the Friday practice sessions during the last two races prior to the summer break.
Allison said that the E20 is a good base of a car and they are still trying to get the most out of it to be ahead in the season. The DDRS is based on the Mercedes DDRS but the layout is quite different from it. The air inlets on either side of the air-box
are different and there are some visible ducts at the rear of the car.
Asked what would be new on the E20 in Spa, Allison said, “Quite a lot of different bits. A big focus has been getting ready for Monza which is immediately after Spa and requires a unique down-force package. It's only one race but it requires a whole new
set of wings and a disproportionate amount of work.”
Talking about the performance he expects out of the car at Spa Allison said, “Should we have the same situation at Spa, the nature of the corners and the loadings on the tyres should be sufficient to generate enough heat in the rubber, so we're not unduly
concerned. We would prefer a dry weekend, but we should be competitive whatever the weather.”
It will be interesting to see how the team fares after the summer break.
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