Lotus F1 Team Monday testing review

Why Does It Always Rain On Me? - Barcelona Test, Day 1

Romain Grosjean returned to the Circuit de Catalunya for another day of testing in cold and wet conditions in Barcelona. The team ran through a programme of assessments and correlations, including work on the DDRS Device.

With the unfavourable track conditions, only short aerodynamic runs were conducted in the afternoon.

Fast Facts:Track: Barcelona, Spain, 5.9kmChassis: E21-02Weather: Cloudy, frequent showers, ambient 8-10C, track 8-12CProgramme: System checks, temperature monitoring, data correlation, assessment of the performance of the car with its initial aerodynamic package, DDRS Device correlationLaps Completed: 52Classification: P11, 1:34.928Interruptions: Red flags

Whats Next?

Romain returns to the E21 for his final day of pre-season testing tomorrow.

Romain Grosjean: Another day with bad weather in Barcelona is not what I wanted, but theres nothing you can do about it. It was a bit of a frustrating day as we concentrated on aero runs and never went for a time on the drying track surface. The car feels good on both the intermediate and wet tyres and weve run through more of our pre-season test programme so those are positives. You never want to see yourself at the bottom of the timing screens, so hopefully thats the only time it happens this season. We certainly know theres more pace in the car than we saw today!

Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: Given the weather, this mornings session concentrated on running assessments between the wet and intermediate tyres and were getting a much better idea of Pirellis 2013 wet tyres. In the afternoon we concentrated on assessing our rear wing DDRS Device. These conditions arent great as its difficult to run comparison tests with an ever changing track surface. Nevertheless, weve clocked up more laps on the E21, tried different settings and conducted numerous aero-runs. This meant that our lap time today was very far from what wed expect had we conducted a more normal test programme.

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