Lotus heading in right direction
Heikki Kovalainen and Lotus have the best finishes of the new teams so far this season. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Lotus has been battling with Virgin for the honor of being the quickest of the three new teams.
“I think the race performances generally have been strong,” he told SPEEDtv.com. “And not at the cost of qualifying, as the last two qualifying sessions have been good as well. It’s been good fun and we’re making progress. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re heading in the right direction.
“In the winter testing we had some problems, so we’ve been surprised to see the reliability that we’ve had now. We had some problems in Malaysia, but it didn’t stop us. I think we’ve done a good job and we are improving that side of things all the time. We just need to keep working.”
Kovalainen finished Sepang after a long stop in the pits while what turned out to be a sensor problem was traced.
“Obviously as a result it was not ideal because we had some problems, and I didn’t have a great start. But in the end when we got out again and fixed the problem that we had – it was just a sensor failure – it was not too bad.
“I was trying to make a move on di Grassi into Turn 4 and I locked my rears and just tapped his front wing a little bit, and it gave me a puncture. The sensor thing happened just after the pit stop, it was a co-incidence.
“We probably could have stayed out but I was getting a warning about the power steering, and usually it goes away. I lost eight or nine laps. In the end the pace was quite good, I was able to pull away from di Grassi and do some reasonably competitive times. We were quite easily the quickest of the new cars.”
Kovalainen hopes that the major upgrade due for Barcelona will help to close the gap to the cars ahead.
“We’ll see. We know that it’s going to be a major upgrade for us, probably a second in terms of lap times. Let’s see what the others can deliver and what we can deliver.
“Hopefully we’ll improve more, because our starting point is lower. It’ll be interesting to see. I have no reason to believe why it would not be a good step forward. So far the team has hit every single target.”
