Q&A with Alan Permane (Lotus Renault GP chief engineer)

Alan, first of all, what happened with Vitaly’s car in Q2?

We are still investigating exactly what happened. It’s clear that he lost power and the engine died. We believe the air supply to the engine was cut off. It couldn’t be restarted and the car got stuck in gear, which is why he stopped on the track.

Nick was an unfortunate victim of the red flag – why was he running so late in the session?

Nick’s time from Q1 suggested that it might be difficult for him to make it through to Q3. That’s why we wanted to run right at the end of Q2 to take advantage of the maximum track evolution. As it happened, Vitaly’s car brought out the red flags at exactly the wrong moment, and Nick then got caught up in the traffic in the busy rush at the end of Q2.

Nonetheless, the car has looked quite competitive this weekend. That must give you some encouragement for the race?

I think we can expect to see our pace being relatively better in the race, even compared to Vitaly’s good qualifying pace. We know our car is fast off the line; we’ve got very good straight-line speed and the R31 looks after its tyres well. There’s no reason why we can’t bring two cars home in the points.

What is the situation with tyres for the race?

Our poor qualifying performance leaves us with more tyre options than we would normally have. We’ve effectively saved an extra set of soft tyres on each car, which are available for the race.