Eric Boullier believes that Lotus' drop in performance at the Malaysian Grand Prix was just a slight hiccup. A race in which Mercedes' new driver Lewis Hamilton - claimed Mercedes are Red Bulls closest competitor. Boullier also believes that from China on-wards the team can return to challenging for the victory.
Image: YallaF1
The Lotus Team Principal did state that the conditions at the
Malaysian Grand Prix, had in fact masked the Lotus' pace. He also said that a result of sixth and seventh - compared to
Raikkonen's victory the weekend before - were anomalous.
Speaking about the Malaysian Grand Prix, Boullier told
AutoSport:
"I don't think it's completely revealing, obviously we had different conditions and it worked for Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari. I don't think it revealed [our] potential in that race. You can expect some much better results in normal conditions."
Boullier was referring to the first Grand Prix, the weekend before Malaysia. Where
Kimi Raikkonen showed how well he can manage his tyres - resulting in him pulling off a stunning drive to claim the chequered flag at the Australian Grand Prix. However, qualifying around the same position as Australia, Raikkonen was unable to progress like he did in Albert Park. Boullier claims this is due to the conditions that surrounded the Sepang circuit.
"Qualifying was not in our favour, [and] the time we lost at the start of the race we couldn't recover, I think the team did a safe strategy for both cars in the points and we could keep contact with the leaders so it was good. It's all about tyre management to do a nice race. [Malaysia] was a bit tricky, let's wait until normal conditions."
Boullier said he was confident the team could improve on its qualifying performance, compared to the front-runners, particularly with new upgrades coming in time for the Chinese Grand Prix.