Lotus aims for points at Spanish GP
The team has shown signs of progress so far this season after closing the gap to the midfield teams and finishing ahead of a Williams at the Chinese Grand Prix. The rear of the car will be significantly updated at the Spanish Grand Prix next month and technical director Mike Gascoyne believes it will give his team the best chance yet of breaking into the top ten.
"With the three races coming up our major update will come at Barcelona, which will be a major update to the diffuser and rear end of the car – it will bring quite a lot of performance to the car," he said in a team video. "I think if we look at scoring points we have to look at Barcelona onwards, I think the updates to the car are going to be very significant."
Gascoyne said Lotus could be pleased with its start to the season and insists it is now on top of its tire warm-up problems in cooler conditions.
"It's always quite an intense time to get everything freighted out to those flyaway races and it's difficult to get many updates on the car," he added. "I think in general we are reasonably pleased. We had four finishes out of six and showed good pace in China especially, we also qualified very close to the cars in front in Malaysia.
"I think the one negative is that we've struggled a little bit in qualifying and one-lap pace, especially in cooler conditions and track temperatures. But I think that is something we are getting on top of and the next few races won't be a problem." ESPN F1