Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsLotus F1

Lotus seeking solution for ‘strange’ new issue

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Lotus is seeking a solution for a charge air system leak which blighted its first race weekend of the season.

While Pastor Maldonado crashed out on the opening lap, team-mate Romain Grosjean retired at the end of the same lap after making a very slow start. It transpired that a leak from the charge air system was to blame, and technical director Nick Chester admits it was a recurring problem during the opening race weekend which it had not seen throughout pre-season testing.

“There was a problem with the charge air system where a leak developed and this happened to both cars on Friday,” Chester said. “With a bit of work and a few changes we had the initial problem fixed, however unfortunately we saw something similar on Sunday on Romain’s car.

“We had done over 4,000kms in winter testing and that issue hadn’t occurred so it is a bit strange that it happened now. When you are at the track it can be challenging to solve such an issue rapidly nonetheless we are now rectifying the issue at the factory.

“We have a couple of different approaches and we’re doing extensive testing to ensure we have a robust solution.”

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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.