Lotus can challenge for top ten finishes

(Eric Vargiolu DPPI - Renualt Sport)

 

The Lotus F1 Team's Head of Operations Alan Permane believes that his outfit can challenge team's like McLaren and  aim for points scoring finishes on a consistent basis. The Enstone based team have endured an incredibly tough start to the season with neither Pastor Maldonado nor Romain Grosjean 

finishing the first race of the season while Maldonado failed to finish last weekend's race in Malaysia. It was slightly more promising for Grosjean who managed to finish the race ahead of former team mate Kimi Raikkonen who is driving for Ferrari this season.

Despite the disappointing start to the season Permane has stated:

'Racing for tenth is not what we want to do, but when you look at where teams like McLaren are, they certainly look very catchable. We know what we can do to improve things with the power unit and we are working hard with Renault to do that'

Permane may believe that his team are capable of catching McLaren, however, right now the results are stacked against the Enstone based team as McLaren currently lie in second place in the Constructors championship on 43 points while Lotus are one of four outfits yet to score a point.

McLaren also have former Lotus team boss Eric Boullier as they new Racing Director, the Woking based outfit also brought Ciaron Pilbeam on-board from Lotus. It is going to take time for the Lotus F1 Team to return to front of the grid, however, with the regulations changes for this season the team have an opportunity to try something different like they already did with their twin nose.

Permane went on to say:

'All the engineers and the mechanics here are doing incredibly long hours and for everybody back at Enstone it's soul-destroying not to see the car on track after all the work that's gone in'

The new deputy team principal at Lotus, Frederico Gastaldi believes that the team will be in a position to challenge for points on a regular basis from the Spanish GrandPrix onwards.

We will just have to wait and see what happens over the coming races.

©Ben Johnston 2014

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