Q&A with James Allison (Lotus tech director)

After a strong start to 2012, Lotus F1 Team Technical Director James Allison talks us through the highs and lows of the season so far and why there’s plenty of cause for optimism over the rest of the year…

James, what stands out as your favourite moment of the 2012 season so far?

There have been lots of good moments, but Qualifying in Melbourne gave me the greatest pleasure. We suspected pre-season that we had a pretty good car but you don’t really know for sure until first qualifying at the first race. As Romain crossed the line in Q3 I knew that our pre-season pace had been real and that – after a really tricky year last year – we were going to be able to bounce back , that we weren’t going to make anyone’s life easy and that we were going to have a good season.

Has there been a worst moment?

Yes, the worst moment by far was when the chassis broke on the first day of the first Barcelona test with Romain. For about twelve hours I was not even certain that we would be able to get the car fixed by the first race. Missing the first test was bad enough, but not making the first race would have been an absolutely desperate situation for us. It was only once we had understood the failure and figured out how to fix it that the world started to return to normal.

Has there been a time that you found particularly scary?

The chassis failure described above was very scary – I wouldn’t wish it on anyone!!

You might also have expected me to highlight the recent tussle at turn 1 between Kimi and Romain in Hungary but I didn’t find it particularly scary because I didn’t see it; I was on the pitwall but I was watching lap times and telemetry! I could hear on the intercom the driver’s respective engineers telling them “you are going to be fighting your team-mate” so I knew it was going to be exciting. However, our drivers are pretty sensible, so I didn’t expect it to end in tears. By the time I learned that they had grazed one another while settling the corner it had already happened so I didn’t need to be scared…

What is the moment you are the most proud of this season so far?

There are the obvious times when the car has managed to get a good podium, you clearly feel proud of the team for that. However, that feeling of pride is ephemeral and is very quickly supplanted by fretting about the next race.

What makes me feel properly and enduringly proud is to work at Enstone, to be part of a group that has weathered a lot of storms in recent years and yet has refused to bend its knee. We have been written off as a spent force many times and yet internally we have all known that this was an unfair assessment. The team is stuffed to the gunnels with absolutely fantastic people who have kept their noses to the grindstone throughout and for whom the key things are now starting to come together to show the quality that has been here all along. We have a pair of very decent drivers and all the investment and effort that has been made in this team both from our Owners and by all the individuals who work here is starting to bear fruit. I feel ever so proud and happy to be part of that.

Finally, what are you most looking forward to in the second half of the 2012 season?

I’m mostly looking forward to seeing how the two Championship battles play out. We have been scoring points at a rate that has just about kept us in touch with both Driver’s and Constructor’s Championships. However, although we have outscored any other team since Monaco, we know that we could have achieved much, much more than this given the pace of our car and drivers. We appear to be getting stronger as the year progresses. Our drivers both have their tails up and I keep glancing at the calendar and thinking “the car should go well at that one.. and at that one… and at that one”. The part of me that wants to stay married wants the summer shutdown, but there is a large part of me that wants to skip straight to the next series of races to have a chance to chase down those in front of us and to see if we can make a fight of it.

Source: www.lotusf1team.com