Lotus has confirmed it will not debut its new car at the first pre-season test in Jerez at the end of January.
Whilst Lotus technical director Nick Chester confirmed the majority of the E22’s crash tests had been completed, he added that attending Jerez wouldn’t fit their development programme.
“We’ve made very good progress with the various homologation tests which took place before Christmas including chassis squeeze and side impact loading tests as well as the rear crash structure, meaning we just have the nose test to complete the car’s homologation.”
However, he confimed that the car, which will be driven by Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado, will not be present at the first test and would likely be unveiled before the second test which takes place two weeks later in Bahrain.
“We’re going to keep our car under wraps a little longer than some other teams,” he said.
“We’ve decided that attending the Jerez test isn’t ideal for our build and development programme.
“We are likely to unveil the car before attending the Bahrain tests, and in Bahrain we should really be able to put the car through its paces in representative conditions.”
The news will come as a shock for some in the paddock, with many teams admitting that it would be useless to miss the first test or use their 2013 car due to the massive regulation changes which include a completely new engine.
Discussion about this post