The ban on front and rear inter-connected suspension systems certainly didn’t change the pecking order as some predicted, but one of the biggest losers was Lotus and they’re still feeling the impact of the ban according to technical director Nick Chester.
The team arguably had, alongside Mercedes, one of the most advanced systems on their car and the impact of removing it hurt the E22’s already poor performance.
Chester says progress has been made over the summer break in clawing back those losses, but they still “hurting” from the change.
“We have made some progress in reducing the deficiency from losing the interconnected suspension but we are still hurting a little bit,” he admitted.
“We have some revised mechanical parts for Spa including some new springs and enhanced suspension settings which should help. It was a highly developed system on the E22 beforehand so it is hard to claw all of the performance back straight away.”
In addition, the team will bring further upgrades to the car with the hope of introducing a new front and rear-wing at Spa.
“We have a fair amount of new development parts for Spa such as new bodywork and some smaller modifications centred around the front of the chassis which should give some good downforce benefits for us,” added Chester.
“We will still have plenty of developments to come as the season goes on.
“Front and rear wing developments are planned for Spa. The rear wing upgrades may be tight for Spa due to the time lost in manufacturing during the summer shutdown but we are pushing for it to be in Belgium.
“The key thing is that we are continuing to push development of the E22 in the coming races with some fairly substantial upgrades. We know that there are some very sensitive areas of the car where we can make some good gains so we will be focusing on these areas too.”
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