Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsLotus F1

Lotus taking ‘reasonable upgrade’ to China

Lotus technical director Nick Chester says the team will have “a reasonable upgrade” at the Chinese Grand Prix.

Lotus failed to score a point in the opening two races despite a switch to the Mercedes power unit seeing it more competitive than last season. As part of its development program, Chester says the team will be bringing upgrades to the car next weekend as it seeks to add downforce to help get its first top ten finish of the season under its belt at Shanghai.

“We have bodywork upgrades at the front and rear of the car,” Chester said. “In combination, we have a reasonable upgrade package for Shanghai which mainly focusses on improving our downforce.”

With Lotus cars tending to be easy on their tyres, Chester also admits the expected low temperatures in China has given the team another area to focus on in search of performance.

“The range of ambient temperatures can vary significantly in Shanghai from around 10 to 30 degrees Celsius so that’s quite significant. We can’t know for sure in advance what the weather will be like but yes it will certainly be cooler than the last race! We will put emphasis towards generating the right tyre temperatures. And we’ll certainly pack our fleeces.”

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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.