Team Lotus’ technical director Mike Gascoyne says their new car has a lot of pace – Formula 1 news
Team Lotus’ technical director Mike Gascoyne has said that their new car has a lot of pace to challenge the mid-running teams of Formula 1 in the 2011 season.
Despite the fact that Lotus were well off the pace of the mid-running teams at the season opening race that took place in Australia on 27 March, Gascoyne is confident that the team will chase rest of the teams soon.
The team stated before the beginning of the 2011 Formula 1 season that they are confident that their new car T128 was good enough to move them into the midfield. Even according to the times they scored during the pre-season test sessions, it seemed that
they have produced a much better car as compared to their 2010 car.
Nevertheless, the critics believe that the team will not be able come closer to their goal in 2011 as they were more than 2 seconds off the fastest time of the qualifying session which was set by Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull.
“Utter nonsense. The last day in Barcelona was a race simulation, so why would we lie to ourselves?” said Gascoyne.
Other than that, Mike stated that the main reason for the lack of pace of their new car was that the team was unable to adjust itself to the new Pirelli tyres in cooler temperatures. However, he is now confident that the team will be able to give a much
better performance this weekend at the Malaysian Grand Prix.
“The conditions at Sepang should suit us more favourably. I think the track temperatures will help us show more of the car's true pace and as the layout it is quite similar to Barcelona - relatively high aero and a good mix of low and high speed turns -
I think we will be able to extract more performance from the car than we were able to in Melbourne,” added Mike.
Both of the Team Lotus drivers are confident about the Malaysian Grand Prix as well and have vowed to give their best for the team in the season.
Tags: