Q&A with Lotus F1 Team technical director Nick Chester

(Alastair Staley for the Lotus F1 Team) 

The Lotus F1 Team head to the Brazilian Grand Prix having trialed their 2015 spec front nose and wing which will be used on the E23 as the current nose on the E22 has been banned by the FIA for the 2015 season. Although the team did not run the new new wing during the United States Grand Prix last weekend the team did run it on Romain Grosjean's car in the first free practice session at the Circuit of the Americas.

The Enstone outfit saw a marked improvement in their on track performances as both Lotus cars finished ahead of McLaren Mercedes Jenson Button and their former driver Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen with Pastor Maldonado finishing the race in 9th place and Romain Grosjean 

   (Charles Coates for the Lotus F1 Team)                           (Alastair Staley for the Lotus F1 Team)

Chester took part in a Q&A session with the Lotus F1 Team ahead of this weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix:

The team seems to be making some final tweaks to the E22 which are resulting in a car that is much more driveable for Pastor and Romain - is this fair to say?

We have worked on the aerodynamic side of the car all year but have particularly been working on the aerodynamic consistency from about mid-season and this is proving beneficial. On the mechanical side we have made some changes that have helped and we had also brought a few new parts to Austin that were useful. Both drivers found that the car was more consistent and better to drive. 

We saw the fruits of this when Pastor qualified in eleventh which meant tenth on the grid because of a penalty for another car. He was very close to making it into Q3 too, which was a real positive and a reasonable step forward. It was pleasing to get into the points on Sunday and even more satisfying to know that both cars could have scored points.

How should the Interlagos circuit layout suit us?

The first and second sectors should be okay for us however the third sector, with one corner followed by a climb up hill and on to the straight, will be more challenging. Overall, I don’t think that it will suit us as well as Austin but we won’t know for sure until we’re there and we have some laps under our belt. 

We have found a bit more in the car but Interlagos might be trickier for us than it has been in the United States. The high altitude might have an impact on the power unit’s performance, although this will be different than in previous years due to the changed aspiration of the engine.

Interlagos is quite an old-school track. What are the idiosyncrasies of it from an engineering perspective?

It is a tricky circuit to find the right set-up. The middle sector is very twisty with a lot of low speed turns and then the final sector is essentially one corner on to a very long straight. 

The compromise on how to run on downforce is therefore quite challenging. You want to take downforce off for the last sector but then want it on for the other sectors. We tend to rely on where the simulation suggests will be the best compromise and then adapt through the weekend dependent on our speed and sector performance.

Will we be looking to 2015 in any of our practice sessions?

We will continue our programme to evaluate aero parts for next year. We are doing a lot of positive work on the E23 back at Enstone and validating some of the concepts at the track on the E22 is very useful.

How do you evaluate the performance with the 2015 development nose on Friday at Austin?

The performance was pretty much as we expected it to be: we thought it would be a little bit down on the current nose which it was but all the measurements gathered were really useful for helping us with the development noses for the E23. They will be along the lines of what we tested in Austin but still they will be further developed.

Are the tyre changes for Brazil beneficial to us?

The original allocation of the hard and medium compounds was Ð in our opinion Ð way too hard. The medium and soft tyre allocation is better, but still quite conservative. Certainly, we suffered in Sochi with the allocation there so we’re much happier that Pirelli has made the change and I think most of the teams and drivers feel the same.

© Ben Johnston 2014