Chester : We have faith that there is more to come from the E22

Lotus F1 Team Technical Director Nick Chester explains the special challenges provided by F1’s Austrian return…

How would you categorise the Spielberg circuit ?

The layout requires a medium downforce package for the car. In terms of demands it’s similar to Bahrain with some decent straights and then an infield section with medium speed corners. So it’s lower downforce than some tracks on the calendar. Pirelli’s track surface analysis points to a relatively non-abrasive, smooth asphalt which is why we will see the soft and super soft allocation once more.

How much of a challenge is it to understand a new circuit ?

It can be quite challenging, although in the case of Austria we have been before. We raced there from 1997 to 2003, so there’s a certain knowledge bank we can dip into. In particular we have information about driving lines which improves the accuracy of our simulations. In contrast, with a brand new circuit it’s more complicated because we have to generate a driving line to be able to run a simulation and without a real driving line the simulated corner speeds will not necessarily be 100%. We’ve already got real data for Austria, so we can do a basic simulation quite easily.

Neither driver has driven the track before as F1 drivers, how does that change our approach ?

It biases you towards doing longer runs and much of the first session will be about letting Pastor and Romain learn the circuit. As we haven’t been there for over a decade, things like track surface evolution could be a challenge as we learn how much the track cleans up as the weekend progresses and this has an impact on set-up.

The post Canada debrief can’t have been pleasant ?

It’s fair to say we were not happy with our performance in Canada. We had a number of issues with Pastor’s car over the weekend, emanating both from ourselves and from Renault Sport F1 whilst Romain struggled with race pace and experienced an issue with his rear wing. To say we are investigating these issues thoroughly is an understatement. Pastor’s issue in the race was related to a power unit sensor problem. It’s only a small component on the car but the issue had big repercussions. Pastor was on course to finish strongly in the points. With Romain’s car we’ve identified the issue with the wing and taken preventative measures to ensure it won’t happen again. Every time we experience a retirement it hurts every single person at Enstone and all of our partners. We will keep pushing until we return to the exemplary level of reliability we enjoyed over recent seasons.

What are the latest developments for the car for Austria ?

We have a number of aero updates and we have some more work to do on braking. There is a good chunk of time still to be found in the braking zone and the key to unlocking this potential is enabling the latest brake-by-wire systems to deliver better feedback to the drivers.

Where does the focus lie between development of this year’s car and work for 2015 ?

There are no significant rule changes for 2015 so anything we do with this year’s car is beneficial for next year’s car too. We are learning a lot this year, even if there are tough lessons on occasion. We have faith that there is a lot more to come from the E22 and will continue to develop. We are well underway with the design of the E23 which should be a significant step forwards, both in performance and in the area of reliability which has challenged us and Renault Sport F1 so much at the start of this new generation of rules.