• News

Barrichello impressed with Lotus progress

Lotus has closed the gap to the more established teams with its new car © Sutton Images

Enlarge

Related Links

• Drivers:
• Rubens Barrichello

• Teams:
• Team Lotus
• |
• Virgin

Rubens Barrichello has said that he has been impressed by the apparent step forward taken by Lotus.

Lotus, Virgin and HRT all made their debuts last season, with Lotus quickest of the three but still well off the pace of the rest of the field. 2011 is seen as an opportunity for all of the newer teams to close that gap, but with HRT yet to test its F111, only Lotus and Virgin can be judged, with Barrichello saying Lotus had halved the gap to the front runners.

"Lotus were four seconds behind Red Bull in 2010," Barrichello told O Estado de S.Paulo. "They seem to have improved two seconds for this year."

While all three teams will have looked to progress and challenge for the second qualifying session in the new season, Barrichello said Virgin may have to rethink that target, questioning their ability to qualify at all.

"With the return of the 107 per cent rule, it is possible that a few times they will not qualify," he said. "At the moment they seem slow."

Barrichello's Williams team yesterday confirmed that they will run KERS at the opening grand prix in Melbourne despite problems with the system in testing. Lotus chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne, however, said they were unlikely to ever implement the system on the T128.

"We will discuss it with Renault, but for a small team like us, KERS is a very high cost," Gascoyne told Auto Motor und Sport. "We would need to change the chassis significantly, as at the moment there is no room for KERS."

He didn't completely rule out using the system in the future though, saying that Lotus' hand may be forced if they found themselves consistently losing out at race starts.

"It would not be good if we're among a few of our direct opponents in qualifying and then before the first corner we lose three or four places because we lack that extra power on the line," he said.

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.