Lotus Racing Once Again Leads The New Teams In Belgian Grand Prix

Lotus Racing had an eventful weekend at the Belgian Grand Prix, which saw Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and McLaren's world champion Jenson Button failing to cross the finishing line. Heikki Kovalainen took 16th place after recovering from a slow start, while Jarno Trulli finished in 19th no thanks to a spin in the latter stages which robbed him of a few places.

“I had a bit of a problem at the start when the engine bogged down, and I activated the anti-stall, but I was already being passed by the time I could get up to speed. The rain had started and unfortunately I damaged my front wing in the last turn so I had to pit”, Kovalainen said, describing his race. “After that it was a question of doing the best job I could, and keeping us in with a chance of taking advantage of the rain at the end, and as it turned out we managed to pick up a few places at the end and finish 16th”.

“At the start I went wide to avoid Heikki and unfortunately was overtaken by a couple of other cars. After that I was struggling a bit in the early stages with my rear tyres overheating—fortunately they came back so I could start pushing and managed to pull away from the guys behind, so that was a good stint until the rain came”, Trulli said, offering his side of the story.

“I had quite a big margin over my nearest competitor so I was looking pretty good, but then the safety car came out. At the restart I was following the other cars but obviously the visibility was very poor and I made a bit of an error on a high speed corner, touched the white line with the rear end of the car and it just slipped away from me, which meant I lost places. I continued, but then the race was over from there”.

Chief Technical Officer Mike Gascoyne was glad that Lotus Racing once again finished ahead of its nearest rivals: “Heikki had a problem when the rain started. We changed him onto intermediates, but were then a little slow in changing him back, but he drove a great race, and was quick at the end in the wet conditions, and he again brought us home best of the new teams”.