Lotus boss Tony Fernandes has revealed that the 2011 Lotus car is not being designed with KERS in mind, despite the systems expected resurrection.
FOTA are expected to confirm the return of the system, with Ferrari and Renault pushing a greater output of 150hp compared to 2009’s 80hp for ten seconds instead of just over six.
Lotus believe they are better off without the system thanks to its costly development process and shady reliability history.
“We will not use the KERS system next year and we have good reasons for this decision,” Fernandes told Turun Sanomat.
“Faced with this year to buy nearly all the parts from other suppliers, we are now in a position that we can build the entire car in our own factory. So we are trying to take advantage of the experience we have collected from the current car and to make all projects more effective.”
With the system weighing several kilograms, it presents a challenge for the engineers, especially now the cars have much larger fuel tanks – meaning weight distribution is key.
“If we were to use KERS in accordance with the Technical Working Group [ruling], we would have to start from zero with the whole car package and its weight distribution.
“The larger teams are different in this respect, they already have solid experience with KERS from recent years,” team boss Tony Fernandes explained.
“What we saw last season, it is not easy to get KERS to operate effectively and reliably. It took a lot of time, money and resources. We are fully confident that, yes, without it we are going to cope.”
