Heikki Kovalainen thinks Lotus are in ‘good shape’ after Friday practice in Australia. The team’s running was slightly curtailed thanks to light rain in the afternoon but Lotus managed to finish ahead of the other two new teams and Kovalainen managed a better lap than Alguersuari in the Toro Rosso.
After a problem his differential in the morning session, the Finn was pleased to have a fully working car in the afternoon. “The second session was much better for me, because the car functioned very well and we had the differential working 100%. The car felt really really good and we were very pleased with the way it was behaving. Obviously the rain disrupted things a little bit, but everyone was in the same boat. So, we're well prepared, and we're just going to try to maintain the reliability that we've achieved so far. Overall we're in really good shape.”
Teammate Jarno Trulli was not quite as enthusiastic about the day as Kovalainen. He suffered technical problems in the morning and then lost set-up time in the afternoon due to the weather. “It's been a bit of a difficult day because we lost a bit of time this morning, and unfortunately this afternoon the track was pretty wet so we couldn't really find a good set up. When I went out I had a few issues with understeer but, though it'll be a little difficult tomorrow, we'll see what we can learn in final practice before qualifying starts.”
Mike Gascoyne, Lotus Chief Technical Officer, sounded pretty positive with the day’s efforts. “Obviously the second session was affected by rain, which made it difficult, but we were able to run both types of tyre and get a feeling for how they both behave. Overall not a bad day – we got through most of our program, despite the conditions in the second session, so I'm pretty pleased.”
