Lotus will introduce its biggest upgrade of the season so far, as it bids to turn its gradual slide from the front to the slowest of the front-runners around.
The Enstone outfit started the season with a win at the Australian Grand Prix for Kimi Raikkonen, followed by three podiums for the Finn and one for Romain Grosjean. In the last two races, however, the former has scored just three points and the latter none.
The team’s director of trackside operations, Alan Permane, is confident their latest developments – tested last week during a straight-line aero run – will go someway to getting them back to the front at British Grand Prix next weekend.
“We have a tighter, figure-hugging bodywork package which should give some benefit; especially if the weather is quite cool at Silverstone,” he explained.
“There’s a new front wing, suspension profiles and suspension upgrades in addition to various other aero upgrades, which combine to give us what should be our biggest step forward of the year.
“This is a good thing, of course, but we’ll be running them in the context of all our rivals probably unveiling significant upgrade packs too. We conducted a couple of days of straight-line running after Canada with positive results and some of the fruits of this work should be seen in Silverstone.”
Raikkonen too is expecting a step forward to keep his title hopes alive after dropping to third in the title championship, 42 points adrift of leader Sebastian Vettel.
“Silverstone is a more normal circuit and we’ve been okay at every other permanent circuit so far this year,” he said. “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be back to the positions we should be with this package.”
