(Alastair Staley for Lotus F1 Team)
The Lotus F1 Team endured a mixed first take back on track following the Formula One Summer break at the Enstone outfit joined their rivals on track for practice ahead of this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix at the Spa Francorchamps circuit which officially marks the start of the second half of the 2014 Formula One season.
Lotus head into the second half of the season hoping to improve on their position in the championship as the team are currently in 8th place in the Constructors championship on eight points. In Belgium today the outfit had a mixed result as Romain Grosjean ended the opening session in 13th place while in the second session he was in 14th place. Speaking after the session the Frenchman commented by saying:
'The first practice session went well today. We had a little bit more of a challenge in FP2 with a small technical issue on the rear of the car early on in the run and there was some loss in performance as a result. Given that this is a track which we knew would be a challenge, we focused mostly on finding the right downforce level and getting the set-up where we want it to be. It’s likely to be quite a tough weekend but we’re optimising every part of the package. You never know what can happen at Spa.”
While Grosjean finished the session in the midfield pack his team mate Pastor Maldonado had a far from ideal start to his Belgian Grand Prix weekend. In the opening practice session this morning, the Venezuelan finished in in 18th place completing 21 laps while in the second session he brought out the red flags early on after what he described as a 50/50 incident which resulted in his E22 suffering severe damage meaning that he could not complete the session. Speaking afterwards Maldonado said:
'I lost the car at the exit of turn nine so that was my afternoon finished. There was a quick hello to the medical centre on the way back to the garage, but I’m fine and the damage to the car is not so much. I’d already been able to determine from the morning that we have a reasonable car here. Certainly, we have potential to fight for a good qualifying session and a good race. We do struggle with our power for the long straights, but it is better than we expected so that’s a plus point. We’re compensating with the set-up for the second sector so let’s see what we can do tomorrow.'
The team head into tomorrow's qualifying session hoping to make up for the time that they lost today and will be hoping that they may be able to break into the top ten this weekend which could be possible depending on what the track conditions are like tomorrow with a very high possibility of rain.
The team's Track side Operations Director Alan Permane commented following today's action saying:
'Today was planned as a conventional Friday in terms of run programme, however Pastor was unable to get any useful running in the afternoon after his off. This meant we had to revise our plans for Romain somewhat. In the morning we completed our aerodynamic assessment schedule including Pastor evaluating a new front wing. In the afternoon we gained a good amount of data from Romain. His suspension set-up was not perfect and we’ve identified some easy gains there, and we also have sufficient data to run through ahead of tomorrow.'
© Ben Johnston 2014
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