Lotus Technical Director Nick Chester says further major updates are expected to appear on the Lotus car in the next few races.
The Formula 1 circus returns from it’s mid-season break, including the mandatory two-week factory shutdown. With the Belgian Grand Prix next week, Chester and his team are determined to push on with the development of the E22 in the second half of the season, with front and rear wing upgrades scheduled for the race at Spa to deal with the low-downforce nature of the circuit along with tweaks to chassis and bodywork.
“We have a fair amount of new development parts for Spa such as new bodywork and some smaller modifications centred around the front of the chassis which should give some good downforce benefits for us.” said Chester, who sees his team languishing in the bottom half of the constructors standings in 8th.
“We will still have plenty of developments to come as the season goes on. Front and rear wing developments are planned for Spa. The rear wing upgrades may be tight for Spa due to the time lost in manufacturing during the summer shutdown but we are pushing for it to be in Belgium.
“The key thing is that we are continuing to push development of the E22 in the coming races with some fairly substantial upgrades. We know that there are some very sensitive areas of the car where we can make some good gains so we will be focusing on these areas too.” Chester added.
Chester admitted that Lotus had lost out on their other competitors from the banning of the controversial FRIC suspension system after the British Grand Prix, but says his team were focused on regaining the performance lost from not racing it.
He added: “We have made some progress in reducing the deficiency from losing the interconnected suspension but we are still hurting a little bit.
“We have some revised mechanical parts for Spa including some new springs and enhanced suspension settings which should help. It was a highly developed system on the E22 beforehand so it is hard to claw all of the performance back straight away.”
