Q&A with Nick Chester (Lotus)

Technical Director Nick Chester dissects the team’s Monaco race weekend and looks ahead to the Canadian Grand Prix.

We are heading to Montréal for the Canadian Grand Prix. What are the challenges presented by the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve?

It isn’t a track that is much run on through the year so it can be quite dirty and low on grip at the start of the weekend. The weather can be variable and generating tyre temperatures can be a challenge in Montréal. We will have the Pirelli soft and super soft tyres available and they should help with the low grip of the track. It’s a circuit that has a lot of long straights making it a power and low drag track. It’s a medium to low downforce circuit meaning that we would take quite a bit of downforce off for Montréal. The E23 performed well in the slow speed corners around Monaco, so this combined with the long straights should suit us quite well.

How would you sum up Monaco?

We were relatively pleased with how the car performed in practice and qualifying and it was all the more disappointing not to score any points given our pace throughout the weekend. Had Pastor performed his Q2 lap again in Q3 he would have been seventh on the grid which would have been pretty good. It was a big shame to be let down by a hydraulic problem in the race otherwise he would have been fighting Sergio Perez for P7. Pastor drove well all through the weekend, he really deserved a good haul of points. Romain had done well to go from fifteenth up to tenth place in the race. All we were hoping for was to get him back in to the points following his 5 place gearbox penalty so up to then we were optimistic, however there wasn’t much that we could have done after he got clipped by Max Verstappen. Overall the car went reasonably well in Monte Carlo in the low speed corners which should be good for other tracks coming up.

Could you tell us more about what the issue was on Pastor’s car?

We know that it was a leak from the hydraulic pump and we know which area was leaking. This is one of the parts of the car that is not made at Enstone, so it has now gone to the manufacturer who we are working with for a full analysis. It was quite an unusual issue but we will get to the root of the problem.

How much damage did Romain’s car sustain in the Verstappen assault?

Fortunately Romain’s car didn’t suffer any major damage given the size of the incident. The floor suffered a bit in the impact but the rear suspension resisted well and Romain was able to finish the race, albeit his chances of scoring had evaporated.

Is Montréal a favourite destination for the team?

Absolutely. We always very much look forward to going to Canada. Montréal is a nice city appreciated by all team members. The circuit itself has a lot of history and we’ve seen some amazing racing over the years. We also have done reasonably well at this circuit in recent history so we are eager to get there and score points with both cars.

What impact could refuelling have for the future of F1?

There has been a lot of talk to bring lap times down in 2017 and refuelling will do so by running less fuel in the first couple of stints during the race. It may not change the strategies that much as everyone will re-optimise for it. It may mean though that drivers can push a little bit harder on their tyres as they’d not carry as much fuel. The challenge would be to bring refuelling times down to the times we can do a tyre pit stop nowadays and that would prove quite difficult.