Lotus has confirmed it will introduce a new exhaust system for the Korean Grand Prix, which it believes will put it firmly back in the fight for the title.
Technical director James Allison hailed the upgrade, in which the Coanda-style exhaust is just a small part, as a new era in the teams development.
“The upgrades for Korea are a big step; it is the opening of a new era for us,” he said during a team preview.
Allison explained that Lotus has somewhat missed out on the Coanda-exhaust trend which is in use by the majority of teams, pioneered by McLaren and Sauber at the start of the year.
“We’ve been ploughing something of a lonely furrow on the circuit with our relatively straightforward, power-maximizing exhaust,” he added.
“Once we saw the potential gain of the Coanda system surpasses that of our current design it was clear that we needed to implement it, both for the benefit we could get in the last quarter of this season and also for learning experience it presents us for next year.
“We will run our first version of this style of exhaust in Korea.”
He also revealed that the team wouldn’t run DDRS again until after and during the Abu Dhabi young driver test.
“We haven’t had the happiest of introductions with the system. It’s been harder than I anticipated to make it switch effectively with only the limited opportunity afforded in free practice.
“We’re going to take it away, have another think and most likely give it another go in the Abu Dhabi young driver test where we’ll have more time to develop it in a systematic fashion.”
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