Friday: the new Team Lotus package is working
For this Spanish Grand Prix, Team Lotus has introduced a significant number of updates to its T128. The main one being a blown diffuser, which is equipped by the majority of teams on the grid. The objective was to get closer to the mid-field teams like Force India and Toro Rosso. At the end of this first day, it seems that the new package from the Malaysian team is working as expected. Heikki Kovalainen finished both of the day's sessions about four-tenths behind his competitors.
Heikki Kovalainen – 19th and 18th:
«Overall we can be happy with our Friday. I think we saw significant progress today. Throughout the session, we could see that we were making better and better use of our new package. The gap with the cars ahead seems reasonably small, so I think that’s positive. »
«The key point is that there is still a lot to gain from it. Optimizing all the new features will take time, and even if the car seems good with both the option and prime tires, we know that by analyzing the data tonight, we can make more progress tomorrow and in the upcoming races.»
Jarno Trulli – 23rd and 20th:
A mixed day for me. The team made a management change in the morning session, which meant I couldn’t complete the entire program in FP1, but in the afternoon, we completed a reasonable number of laps, and I started to feel where we had made progress on the car.
During most of the day, I didn’t feel like I was getting the most out of it, but we found some of the performance we wanted with the improvements, and with more work, there’s clearly more to come.
Thierry Salvi – Renault Sport F1:
« In FP1, we had mechanical issues with Jarno’s car, which had to be resolved during the session. We doubled our efforts in FP2 and received good feedback from both drivers, particularly from Jarno, on the new package. We collected a large amount of data from the running we completed today, so we will analyze and review it before FP3 and tomorrow’s qualifying. »
