• Belgian Grand Prix - FP2

Lotus won't run passive DRD at Spa, Sauber tempted

Lotus ran with the passive DRD covered up in FP2 © Sutton Images

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Lotus will not run its passive drag reduction device at the Belgian Grand Prix after inconclusive tests with the system during first practice, but Sauber is tempted to race its version.

The device sheds drag by redirecting airflow over the rear wing and stalling it over a certain speed. Lotus raced the system at the British Grand Prix but shelved it for the following races before bringing it to Spa as an option.

However, after Friday practice technical director Nick Chester said the team would not run it for the rest of the weekend.

"We're still trying to develop very hard to give ourselves a very competitive run until the end of the year," he said. "The passive drag reduction system we've been working on for a while. We targeted it for Spa and we've run it through P1 and we've learned some more with it. I don't think we'll carry on through this weekend with it as we didn't get enough dry running to get where we wanted in P1.

"We are targeting this strong development until the end of the year and the long wheelbase for Monza is part of that. So we are going to keep bringing developments through Monza and then the following races as well. There are certainly developments also planned for Singapore and Korea."

Sauber has a similar system and after making progress at Spa, Tom McCullough, head of track engineering, said his team is considering running it.

"Today we performed a lot of tests on some new parts and the system actually performed better than we were expecting," he said. "It's still not at the stage where we think we're going to race it, even though we are pretty tempted at the moment, so there's plenty of engineers looking at a lot of data. We'll make that decision later on tonight. With regards to next year, any system that you can use to help reduce drag will always help you, so yes, it is part of the consideration for next year's car."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.