Lotus Clarifies Reasons for Pulling Out of Practice

As we reported yesterday, Lotus pulled out of the second round of Formula 1 testing because it found in a flaw in the E20's chassis. Today, it clarified more about what happened. Lotus will be back at testing next week at Barcelona during the third round of testing from March 1-4. 

“Before we were due to fly chassis E20-01 out to Barcelona in replacement of chassis E20-02 - damaged this morning - we ran a series of simulations at the factory based on the data provided by our brief running on track today. As a result, we were able to identify an area which requires some additional work. It will be more productive for us to carry out these modifications to both chassis at Enstone rather than send E20-01 out to this week’s test. We’ll put the right measures in place and we will be able to fix the problem before next week,” said Technical Director James Allison.

Lotus has not gone into detail about exactly what the flaw was, but it affected both cars. It showed up during testing at Catalunya and not Jerez because of the higher speeds there. 

“Not running this week has been a tough decision to take, but we feel that our choice is the right one. On the positive side, we have quickly identified the issue with the chassis and our design office has already devised a solution," said Team Principal Eric Boullier.