Maldonado to stay with Lotus for 2015

At the season halfway mark, Lotus F1 Team Co-Chairman and Team Principal Gérard Lopez looks back on what has been a difficult year to date, finding positives for the future as well as revealing some interesting information for 2015.

Where do you see the team halfway through the 2014 season?

Clearly, we’re not where we want to be and this year has certainly presented us with many challenges. Performance-wise we continue to struggle and in terms of reliability we haven’t been great either. They say you learn more from adversity and I can confirm we’ve learnt a lot this year. This is sometimes the nature of this highly competitive sport and we won’t stop fighting until we’re back where we want to be.

Why has it been so difficult for the team to adapt to the 2014 regulations?

There’s certainly been a change in the order with the new regulations and in terms of results we have been hit pretty hard. There are many reasons for this and every aspect of the causation is being tackled. The attitude at Enstone is not one of finger-pointing and dwelling on issues, but rather one of positive action to improve the situation. We are taking several steps to make us stronger for the future.

In terms of qualifying, this has been another challenging weekend for the team. How hard is that to stomach?

Of course, no-one is happy. On top of our season to date, this weekend we’ve had to remove our interlinked suspension system. This was a very clever piece of engineering, which originated in Enstone and something the team has used for a long time. It’s been emulated by many other teams. Unfortunately, the situation now is that we can’t run this anymore so we just have to adapt. It’s another challenge and one we are meeting head on.

How has this season’s performance affected both drivers?

Both Romain and Pastor have remained positive and focused. This is a real credit to them. They know the effort required to achieve strong results and they are working as hard as ever to ensure we can address every issue and make the most of every opportunity.

There is talk about both drivers and the future, what’s the state of play?

Romain is well aware of the prowess of Enstone after having finished on the podium for the past two years in one of our cars. Pastor was new to the team for this year but he recognises the potential of the squad.

Are you able to say anything about the driver line-up in the future, there’s always a lot of speculation at this time of year…

I don’t want to give too much away, but as it’s half way through the season I can confirm 50% of our driver line-up for 2015 as Pastor is with us for next year. Despite the difficulties we’ve had so far this season, he recognises our true potential as a team and we recognise his true potential as a driver. We will achieve great things together.

Anything else in store for the future?

We do have some great things to come, but it’s important that the team is not stopping developing this year’s car as there is still a lot we can learn; we are going to fight hard for every point we can achieve this year. Looking forward, we have been able to take steps to ensure that 2014’s lessons have been learnt and we get back to where we want to be in 2015 – fighting for podiums. When we look at the team’s recent history we can see what is possible. In 2011 our car followed a unique development path with the forward facing exhausts. This concept didn’t give us the results we wanted but look how we bounced back in 2012 and 2013! Our 2014 car hasn’t given us the results we’ve wanted, so watch this space in 2015 and beyond!