Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsLotus F1

Lotus targeting Williams, Red Bull

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Lotus technical director Nick Chester believes his team can race Williams and Red Bull in next weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.

Williams has marked itself as the third quickest team so far this season, with Valtteri Bottas even holding off Sebastian Vettel's Ferrari to finish fourth in Bahrain. While Red Bull boasts two sixth-place finishes courtesy of Daniel Ricciardo, Lotus has been limited to a best result of seventh but Chester believes the gaps are small enough to erase with updates.

"Certainly, it’s pretty competitive in the midfield and fighting to be at the head of the chasing pack," Chester said. "Mercedes are still the team to beat this season although Ferrari is giving them a chase at the moment. There is a fairly big gap to Willliams who are followed by Red Bull and us - there is a smaller gap there and we can race them."

And Chester says Lotus will be bring a "reasonably significant" update to the E23 at the Circuit de Catalunya.

"It will be an interesting weekend as many teams will bring decent upgrades to the first European race of the season and we are working on bringing a reasonably significant package in terms of bodywork upgrades ourselves.

"There’s a certain amount of anticipation to see what everyone turns up with. In terms of our expectations, there’s nothing to say that we shouldn’t have another strong race in Barcelona, just as we did in China and Bahrain."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.