Saturday: Team Lotus saves tires for the race
After experiencing understeer issues during the Free Practice 3, the Team Lotus drivers benefited from the setup changes made to their T128 between the day's two sessions and prioritized tire management to have more sets of new tires available for the race.
Heikki Kovalainen – 20th and 18th
« I am quite happy with my qualifications, particularly because it was just on a single stint, a single lap to do well […]. We took risks with the tires by going out late in the session, and I think I could have done a bit better in the first sector, but overall, I’m thrilled. I tackled the 130R with the rear wing open, which was quite hardcore but, after being bold with the tires, we are in a good position for tomorrow’s race.
There have been quite a few discussions about tire wear here, but I’m not sure degradation will be as big an issue as people think. The long stint on soft tires yesterday was good; I think we can get about fifteen laps out of them, and given that we have a few sets of new tires left for the race, it will be an interesting afternoon.
Jarno Trulli – 19th and 19th
« It was a good session. The car behaved much better this afternoon, so we made the right setup changes, and even though I made a few mistakes on my fastest lap, I think I couldn’t have gotten more out of it.
Tomorrow, we will fight as hard as possible during the race to give our Japanese fans something to celebrate. Our race pace has been good all season, so I hope I can make a good start as has been the case during many races this year, and see where we finish with the tire strategies.
Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer
It’s a good day for us in both sessions. Jarno and Heikki experienced understeer issues this morning, but we managed to deal with that in qualifying, and they were both happy with their cars this afternoon, according to their feedback.
Jarno chose to make a stint on medium tires quite early in qualifying to see if that could help him warm up his brakes, and then, the plan was to do just one stint on soft tires with both cars. We wanted to make sure to stay clearly ahead of the cars following us and, with tire degradation expected to play an important role in the race, it allowed us to have as many sets of tires as possible for tomorrow, so the job is done.
