• Spanish Grand Prix

Lotus aims to gain a second

Mike Gascoyne is eyeing a place among the midfield runners in Spain © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Spanish Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Mike Gascoyne

• Teams:
• Team Lotus

Lotus chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne has said that the team expects to be able to gain a second in lap time with its new upgrade that will debut in Barcelona.

Having targeted a place in the midfield pre-season, Lotus have been much closer than last year and were even able to beat a Williams on pace in China, but are yet to make it out of the first qualifying session. Gascoyne said that the Spanish Grand Prix would be the first opportunity for the team to see if it can make the final step to the midfield runners.

"Our update package is coming for Barcelona and that is a very significant update package," he said in the Team Lotus Notes. "We think our update is going to allow us to take a clear step into the midfield, so that we are qualifying with them and out-racing them more and more. So, I think that we are reasonably happy, but Barcelona, it's got to see the next step forward."

When asked how much it would give in lap time he said: "We're expecting it to be about a second, up to a second."

Gascoyne confirmed that the basis of the upgrade was a blown exhaust system, and that it was an area where the teams ahead of Lotus had already made gains.

"It's all built around the rear end. It's a Red Bull-style exhaust and diffuser package. We didn't implement a blown diffuser last year, so we had one for the start of this year, but we were only able to really evaluate that in the wind tunnel from Christmas onwards, so we were playing catch up in that area.

I think with a lot of the teams, you can see it's been a hot topic at the start of this year, so it's pretty natural that that was going to be an area we looked at and we've seen from the development we've done that it's a very big step - far bigger than you normally would expect to be making, which is why everybody else has obviously done it. But the good thing is it means that we can catch up with those in front who already have it."

Gascoyne sounded a word of warning though, saying that due to the complexity of the system it may not yield the maximum return immediately.

"It might take us a couple of races to fully exploit it, as I think it is going to depend on the blown floor and engine strategies and some people have more experience than us with that. But we expect our update to be significant. I think we'll see a big step and I think there is more to come over the coming races."

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