Friday: First Normal Day for Lotus Renault

Nick Heidfeld – 8th, then 10th

« Today, the focus was on driving with the new super hard Pirelli tires. Even though we had a little experience from occasionally using them on Fridays, we hadn’t used them much and they didn’t deliver the expected performance. They are noticeably slower on a single lap and also on a long run. This is the main difference compared to the previous hard tires. The positive aspect is that I tried a few new things and evaluated different aspects to try to improve performance. We were also able to work effectively on the settings. I believe we have made progress, but we need to analyze tonight what we have learned and what we can improve for free practice 3 and qualifying. »

Vitaly Petrov – 11th, then 12th

« The positive point is that we were able to test both types of tires over a good number of laps and gather a lot of information, which is the purpose of this day. On the other hand, I lost a lot of time because I couldn’t use the KERS to its full potential, which was a bit frustrating. So I had less power, but the KERS also affects braking, and we had to work on the brakes to compensate. But I am optimistic and look forward to seeing what will happen tomorrow. »

Alan Permane, chief track engineer

A practically routine Friday for us, except that we ran slightly different programs to understand the new Pirelli hard tires. We had both drivers run with heavy and light fuel loads to gather as much information as possible on this new compound. The KERS wasn’t working on Vitaly’s car today, but we are reasonably confident of finding the root of the problem and getting it to work tomorrow. The hard tires should allow for fewer pit stops, but the soft ones are much faster over a lap. The drivers were quite satisfied with their cars today, but I think we can improve them after analyzing the data.

Eric Boullier, team principal

« We faced some difficulties today, but we will start fresh tomorrow to make sure we fight for the top six. Obviously, we do not know with what fuel loads our opponents were running, and we experienced issues with Vitaly’s KERS, which will be fixed for the third free practice session tomorrow. Tire degradation is very noticeable here, and we will have to monitor this closely as we swiftly move to qualifying and then the race. »

According to a Lotus Renault GP press release