Q&A with Alan Permane (Lotus)

Trackside Operations Director Alan Permane talks tyre strategy and explains why sometimes it’s better to run with damaged parts rather than replace them in this exclusive Chinese Grand Prix recap

How was the Chinese Grand Prix for you?

It was an eventful race and good fun to be honest. We had an interesting start with Kimi losing places and Romain gaining them. Once we got onto the prime tyres things went pretty smoothly for Kimi although there was no way we could get past Lewis [Hamilton]; even though we had a very similar pace and perhaps were even quicker than him. We pulled Kimi in very early for his last pit stop – right on what we felt was on the limit of what we could do comfortably – and that meant we jumped him. From then it was a case of managing the tyres and Kimi did an excellent job to take a very good second place.

Given what happened here last year with Kimi running out of tyre performance and losing places near the end of the race, was this a risky strategy?

We are certainly more clued up this year and we learnt a lot last time about the tyre wear with this philosophy of tyre performance. Today, it wasn’t a risk. It was about the limit of what we could do – we wouldn’t have been able to do more than that – but it certainly wasn’t as risky as last year when we knew we were pushing the boundaries to see what could be achieved.

How much detriment was suffered with Kimi’s damaged nose?

He lost quite a bit of carbon from the wing, though some was quite resilient; holding on to the nose and refusing to let go. At each pit stop we were winding on front wing to counter the loss of downforce and this did a reasonable job of cancelling out the damage. We estimate that he lost up to about 0.25secs per lap because of the damage.

Why wasn’t the front wing replaced during a pit stop?

We were still running well without changing it – even being the fastest car on track on occasion – so we could see that the car was still good. The damage was a handicap but not enough to warrant changing the wing which would add a minimum of six or seven seconds to the stop itself, plus bring the additional risk of a related issue due to the car being stationary in the pit lane for ten or so seconds.

How was Romain’s race?

Romain was struggling a little bit more than Kimi with the tyres. He was using his rear tyres up a bit more, so he wasn’t able to push as much. Add this to being stuck in traffic and he had a tough time of it. He did finish in the points, which is always great, but we all wanted to see him get more points than the ninth eventually delivered.

Source : www.lotusf1team.com