Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsLotus F1

Lotus E23 ‘a massive step forward’

Lotus technical director Nick Chester says the E23 is “a massive step forward” for the team after a disappointing 2014 season.

Having won races in both 2012 and 2013, Lotus endured a tough season last year as it managed just 10 points. The new E23 features a different power unit following a switch to Mercedes from Renault as well as an updated nose after the team was forced to ditch its previous twin-tusk design, and Chester is full of confidence that the car will display a clear performance improvement when it makes its track debut at Jerez on Sunday.

“The E23 Hybrid represents a massive step forward for us,” Chester said. “It’s no secret that we struggled with last year’s car so we’ve targeted every area that caused us an issue. We’ve made strong progress in the wind tunnel as well as in areas such as packaging and cooling. We expect the E23 to perform far, far better than its predecessor.”

And while conceding Lotus won’t know where it stands until the first race of the season, Chester said the team fully expects to be much further up the grid in Melbourne.

“We learnt a lot in many areas of the car over the course of 2014 so there are many lessons which have been applied. We know we’ve made a big step. We won’t know how our car will fare in relative terms until we’re out in action at a Grand Prix, but we certainly expect to be much more competitive than last year."

Click here to see the full gallery of the first Lotus E23 images

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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.