Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsLotus F1

Lotus keeping Williams in its sights

Lotus technical director Nick Chester says the team is hoping to emulate Williams this season but admits it will be behind at the start of the season.

Williams - using a Mercedes power unit - finished third in the constructors’ championship last season and was often the closest challenger to Mercedes. With Lotus switching from Renault to Mercedes power for this year, Chester says Williams is a main rival for it now the two teams are running the same power unit.

Asked if Lotus is still hoping to fight with Williams this season, Chester replied: “That’s the target.

“I think they are a bit ahead of us at the moment. We’ve got a few developments coming for race two, race three that will help to hopefully close that gap. But obviously they have had another year with the power unit so they are a little bit ahead.”

Focusing on the speed of development for Lotus so far this pre-season, Chester says the E23 will receive further steps in Malaysia and China.

“It has changed a bit, there has been some updates. We’ve got a few minor updates for Melbourne, not much but a few minor ones which I think will help a little bit, and then we’ve got bigger updates planned for race two and race three.”

Click here for the gallery from day four of the final test

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.