Lotus expect pecking order to change during year

Lotus technical director Nick Chester is expecting a higher than usual rate of development throughout the season thanks to the regulation overhaul.

With new regulations comes new opportunities to exploit the technical roles, and for that reason Chester believes the competitive order could change throughout the season.

“We’re all still getting used to the new regulations so I expect there will be a much higher rate of development through the season as we learn more about these cars,” he said.

“This will probably mean that the competitive order shuffles somewhat over the course of the year as different teams unlock the potential of their cars at different rates.”

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Chester also highlighted the importance of reliability and says he’s certain no team will enjoy the same number of race finishes as they did last year.

“[Reliability] is a big concern for all teams as everything is so new and different from the cars we’ve used before,” he added. “We’ve seen from initial testing that some cars were able to get a good number of laps under their belt very quickly and others were not.

“Every team will learn a lot in the first races and we all expect the unexpected! I don’t think any team will have as good a finishing record as in previous seasons as the last generation of cars were so well developed and their reliability was so strong.

“Our challenge is to get the 2014 cars to be as reliable as their forebears despite all the new technology included. That would be a tremendous achievement for Formula 1.”