Lotus encouraged by early pace

Lotus technical director Nick Chester has said they would have beaten Red Bull, had their drivers finished the Australian Grand Prix.

Both Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado qualified in the top ten, but both retired on the first lap of the race.

Grosjean suffered a loss of power from the start, while Maldonado crashed into the wall after contact with Sauber’s Felipe Nasr.

However, Chester told reporters: “We are reasonably happy. We look like we could be regular Q3 contenders but there is more that we want to be doing such as closing the gap to Williams and moving away more from the group behind us. There is more to do!”

“The race was disappointing as without retirements both drivers would have scored a good chunk of points. If we didn’t experience the unfortunate crash and the charge air system leak, we could probably have been looking at fifth and sixth positions.

“Both drivers had qualified ahead of Felipe Nasr who ended the race fifth and our long run performance on Friday looked good so there is no reason why our drivers could not have achieved that.”

Lotus will expect to score their first points of the season in Malaysia this weekend.

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