Renault improved Lotus by 2 seconds per lap

Tenth on the starting grid in China last Sunday, Romain Grosjean could have confirmed Lotus’s resurgence in the race if he hadn’t had to retire due to a gearbox problem while he was firmly holding the eighth position.

Once the disappointment had passed, it must be acknowledged that the black and gold single-seaters have made real progress to regularly place in the top 10. If Pastor Maldonado had not been clumsy (two off-track excursions on Friday) and unlucky (engine failure on Saturday morning) during the trials, the overall result could have been better.

Gérard Lopez, the owner of the team, attributes this resurgence in form to the improvements made by Renault, which according to him, have allowed them to gain two seconds per lap: « We clearly saw a step forward from Renault in China. The guys were talking about an improvement of at least two seconds, which is huge. And the times don’t lie, we are indeed two seconds ahead in terms of performance. »

Despite this, the two Lotus cars failed to bring valuable points to their tally this weekend in Shanghai, mainly due to various mechanical reliability issues that still need to be addressed on the E22: “The car is good,” continues Lopez in the columns of Autosport. “Romain [Grosjean] had some issues with the diffuser on Saturday, and based on our lap times, we probably could have aimed for sixth in qualifying without these problems.”

Lopez does not hide that the beginning of the year for Lotus has been very complicated and that no one in the team expected it to be so difficult: « We did not expect to have the engine problems we encountered. We came out of the wind tunnel essentially knowing we had a good car. But the problem is that when you put the car on the track, unless you do a lot of laps, you can’t set everything up properly. As a result, we had big, big problems and delays, mainly because we didn’t do enough laps. »

For Lopez, the point of no return was reached in Bahrain and it was urgent to react: “We really hit the peak of negativity after the Bahrain race where both our engines broke [during testing], and we couldn’t do anything. It’s really the point from which, in a positive way, we stopped certain things we were doing and told ourselves ‘we can’t afford to do this for much longer.'”

The team is therefore waiting for the return to Europe, in three weeks in Barcelona as part of the Spanish Grand Prix, to confirm its progress: Renault promises a rather interesting development for Barcelona. We hope to start breaking into the top 10 and compete with those who are there. Since we identified the issues encountered with the power unit, I have always said that our season would start in Barcelona, and I still stand by those words.