Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsLotus F1

2015 'felt a lot more restrictive' for Lotus

Lotus technical director Nick Chester says the development on this year's car "felt a lot more restrictive" due to financial issues.

The Enstone-based team has been the subject of a takeover bid from Renault in the latter half of the season, but with the current team owners having been keen to sell all year they have not been willing to invest in car development. Chester admits it has been noticeable how that has impacted on his work, with the E23 having received few updates during the season.

"It has felt a lot more restrictive," Chester said. "In a normal year we’d bring quite a few major upgrades whereas this year we brought fewer and more minor developments. This means that we had to be more selective in what we brought and we have been a bit more creative in the more minor upgrades."

And Chester admits it has been frustrating to be held back by financial issues when he felt there was a lot more potential in this year's car which has gone unfulfilled.

"I was pleased with the car in a lot of ways but disappointed in the amount of development. We made a good basic car that handled well and with which the drivers could extract the maximum from. Unfortunately we have not been able to put developments on it due to finances; we could have gone a lot further with it otherwise and that would have been very interesting to see."

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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.