Mike Gascoyne is confident the new Lotus F1 team are in "good shape" ahead of their debut season in Formula One.
Technical boss hails new team's "fantastic effort"
Mike Gascoyne is confident the new Lotus F1 team are in "good shape" ahead of their debut season in Formula One.
Having only launched their car ahead of the third of four pre-season tests, the Norfolk-based outfit have had just eight days of running in which to prepare for the first race in Bahrain next weekend.
In that time, the team's Cosworth-powered T127 chassis has shown relatively solid reliability - particularly in comparison with fellow newcomers Virgin Racing.
However, as perhaps predicted, they have spent both tests at or near the bottom of the timesheets.
Such was the case on the team's final day of running at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya, where Heikki Kovalainen finished 11th out of the 12 runners, 4.779s off the pace set by McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.
Of the day itself, chief technical officer Gascoyne said: "It was a game of two halves as they say; we had a good morning where we were able to complete all our plans but a problem with the programme change on the gearbox delayed us in the afternoon, which meant we weren't able to do as much running as we wanted.
"Overall, however, the test has been extremely productive - in general we've had very good reliability, and the team is in very good shape going to the first race."
He added: "Considering the length of time we've had to work on the project it's a fantastic effort from the whole team. Everyone has worked exceptionally hard over the two tests and we now have to work on the pace of the car and improve that, but it's been a tremendous effort from the whole team and I'm very proud of them."
