Team Lotus Achieves ‘Strongest Race Performance’ To Date On Sepang

Team Lotus put in its best racing performance in the Malaysian Grand Prix over the weekend, according to Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne. The results were not as ideal with Heikki Kovalainen taking 15th and Jarno Trulli failing to finish due to a clutch problem, but Gascoyne focused on Kovalainen's performance which kept pace with the established likes of Toro Rosso and Force India.

“Overall our pace was very good at the end, particularly when we were with the leading cars, and we were very close to passing one of the Toro Rossos as we came over the line, which shows how we have progressed”, Gascoyne said. “This weekend has been by far our strongest race performance since we came back into Formula One, so it is good to be racing again”.

“We were only lapped by six cars, we were competitive with the midfield and really at the end when we were being lapped, we were struggling to slow down enough to let the cars go past! It's a real step forward for this team”, Gascoyne said with pride, before addressing the issue of reliability which has plagued both cars and Trulli's in particular over the course of the last F1 season. “Also we made a bit of a step forward with reliability this weekend”.

Likewise, Team Principal Tony Fernandes exclaimed with joy at the race-day performance on Sunday compared with a lacklustre qualifying performance a day before: “It was a real shame about Jarno as I really wanted two cars to come home but Heikki drove a fantastic race and it is exciting that he was really pushing the Toro Rossos in the final few laps—maybe with a couple more laps he would have passed one of them”.

“He kept pace with cars that were much faster than us during qualifying, so I'm thrilled that we have recorded 15th at what was a very tough circuit, so huge congratulations to the whole team and well done to everyone”, Fernandes added.