• Lotus news

Lotus yet to show potential - Allison

Kimi Raikkonen finished fifth in Malaysia after starting tenth © Sutton Images

Enlarge

Lotus technical director James Allison is longing for a "normal" race so that his team can show its true potential.

Lotus has scored sixteen points from the first two races thanks to seventh- and fifth-place finishes for Kimi Raikkonen. However, Raikkonen has yet to start from a representative grid position after a mistake in Australia saw him start from18th and a grid penalty demoted him to tenth in Malaysia. Team-mate Romain Grosjean has fared better in qualifying but has yet to make it past the third lap of a race this year.

"What we'd give for a 'normal' race," Allison told the team's website. "Starting without grid penalties for gearbox issues, without wet conditions for two drivers who have never sampled the Pirelli wet tyres, and so on. The big positive we can take from today is that our pace and degradation on the slick tyres at the end of the race was very encouraging. Give us a clean race with good getaways from the right qualifying positions and we should be able to collect a good reward."

There is a three week gap ahead of the next grand prix in China and Allison said Lotus will add a significant amount of updates to the car in that time.

"We've got plenty of upgrades on the way for China to help extract some more pace from the car," he said. "When you look at how tight the field is, the sort of developments we will bring would gain us quite a few places on the grid if nobody else were doing the same thing; unfortunately for us of course they all are all working just as furiously as we are!

"We'll just have to hope our development slope is steeper theirs' to allow us to inch forward in China. This year more than ever, mounting a sustained development programme will be the key to success."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.