Lotus Racing's Promising Performance Halted By Hydraulics Issue

Lotus Racing was putting in their best performance this season until both Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen were brought to a premature halt by hydraulics failures. Starting on 19th position, Trulli stalled on the track on lap 32, while Kovalainen, who started on 20th position, retired in the pit on lap 33.

“It was difficult at the beginning with the hard tyres, and the team was telling me Heikki was quicker on the options, and as he was on a different strategy he got past”, Trulli said. “Afterwards, I was pulling away from our competitors comfortably, but the failure put an end to the good race I was having”.

“What a shame, I lost power steering in turn eight and it looks like it was a hydraulics failure”, Kovalainen said. “At first I thought I had a puncture as the steering suddenly felt really strange, but then I lost the gearbox, the clutch and throttle. It's so unfortunate as this was our strongest race so far”.

The men in charge, Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne and Team Principal Tony Fernandes, were equally disappointed by the final outcome but pointed to the promise shown by both cars. “Obviously very disappointing to have two cars go out on the same lap when we were having such a strong race, our strongest performance all year”, Gascoyne said.

“Heikki's was a leak from the power steering, and with Jarno we don't know as yet what the specific issue was. Despite that we have to keep our chins up after what was a really strong weekend from the whole team—fix these problems and move on”.

“This looked like it was going to be a great weekend for us, so it's obviously very disappointing to have it all brought to an end in such a fashion, after what was probably our best race so far”, Fernandes said. “Jarno and Heikki should be very proud of the times they put in, and the whole team should be pleased with how far we've come”.