• British Grand Prix

Trulli hopes for Lotus gains

Jarno Trulli is aiming to get closer to the midfield runners at Silverstone © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• British Grand Prix

• Championship:
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• Drivers:
• Jarno Trulli

• Teams:
• Team Lotus

Jarno Trulli says Lotus may be able to gain on the midfield once again thanks to the off-throttle diffuser ban that comes in to force at the British Grand Prix.

Lotus was targeting getting through to the second qualifying session on regular occasions at the start of 2011, and appeared to be getting close to achieving its aim as it regularly got within a second of Williams early in the year. However, the gap has widened again in recent races, but Trulli says the blown diffuser concept has not worked well on the T128 and should mean it is able to regain some of the time lost.

"We think that taking the blown diffuser off can only improve our situation because we never had the results and the experience that everybody - especially in front of us - has had with it," Trulli said. "So probably we can get closer to them and see where we are. Obviously we don't have an exact idea because it will probably be different from car to car, but we think we can be closer to our direct rivals in front of us. So let's wait and see, it's difficult right now to predict."

Trulli admitted that making it through to the second qualifying session would still be a big ask, but that he wasn't ruling it out.

"We always see that very often that it depends on track layout, so it may be that we may miss [out on Q2 by] half a second, or maybe a tenth or maybe just enough to get through. Maybe with a bit of luck we can get through in to Q2, but it's still a big challenge for us at the moment."

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