Lotus Insists Malaysian GP Result Is Not A Trend

[OverTake.gg]

Eric Boullier believes that Lotus' drop in performance at the Malaysian Grand Prix was just a slight hiccup. A race in which Mercedes' new driver Lewis Hamilton - claimed Mercedes are Red Bulls closest competitor. Boullier also believes that from China on-wards the team can return to challenging for the victory.

Image: YallaF1

The Lotus Team Principal did state that the conditions at the Malaysian Grand Prix, had in fact masked the Lotus' pace. He also said that a result of sixth and seventh - compared to Raikkonen's victory the weekend before - were anomalous.

Speaking about the Malaysian Grand Prix, Boullier told AutoSport:
"I don't think it's completely revealing, obviously we had different conditions and it worked for Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari. I don't think it revealed [our] potential in that race. You can expect some much better results in normal conditions."

Boullier was referring to the first Grand Prix, the weekend before Malaysia. Where Kimi Raikkonen showed how well he can manage his tyres - resulting in him pulling off a stunning drive to claim the chequered flag at the Australian Grand Prix. However, qualifying around the same position as Australia, Raikkonen was unable to progress like he did in Albert Park. Boullier claims this is due to the conditions that surrounded the Sepang circuit.

"Qualifying was not in our favour, [and] the time we lost at the start of the race we couldn't recover, I think the team did a safe strategy for both cars in the points and we could keep contact with the leaders so it was good. It's all about tyre management to do a nice race. [Malaysia] was a bit tricky, let's wait until normal conditions."

Boullier said he was confident the team could improve on its qualifying performance, compared to the front-runners, particularly with new upgrades coming in time for the Chinese Grand Prix.

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[Hampus Andersson]

I think the Lotus is one of those cars that are very sensitive to conditions.
Maybe low temps is where it works best. China i think will have similar temps to what we saw in Australia.

Car looked quite terrible in Malaysia frankly. Regardless of that little downforce he lost in the front wing.

 

[Markus Neumann]

Actually, they had very good pace in Malaysia. When Kimi wasn't stuck behind some other car (which he was unfortunately 90% of the time) he often did the fastest laptimes of all cars, at some point 2 seconds faster than the Red Bull.
Being stuck behind slower cars is nothing new to them unfortunately, for example it was particularly bad in India last year. The special conditions of Melbourne, where Pirelli brought the supersoft which only held for a few laps at the start of the race and was vastly inferior to the prime tyre, helped them make up for the bad position on the grid. But if they don't improve their qualifying performance or straight-line speed, I wouldn't be surprised if they see a repeat of the Malaysia result.

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Many people did fastest laps during the race though.
Here´s the laptime chart (or seconds behind leader chart), keep in mind Hamilton was fuel saving from lap 25 and Vettel was taking care of tires in the last stint and ran the second to last stint behind Webber who ran against a time delta. (Vettel was asked to hold a 3 second gap)

Vettel, Hamilton, Massa and Raikkonen shown below.
He wasn´t setting the world on fire.

 

[Markus Neumann]

Plot Hülkenberg and Perez as well and you'll see why he isn't so fast at some points of the race.

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Plot Hülkenberg and Perez as well and you'll see why he isn't so fast at some points of the race.

Or we can just compare from lap 49 and onwards.
Remember how slow the Mercs were running. In contrast to Massa who could gun it as hard as he liked.
The Lotus simply wasn´t there in Malaysia and it´s the reason this thread even exists.