Lotus make breakthrough?

Have Lotus finally made the breakthrough with this seasons E22?

It’s been a good week for the Enstone based team in Spain.

On Saturday, Romain Grosjean earned the team their best qualifying position of the season so far with 5th, which was converted into an eighth place finish on Sunday.

The 8th place finish in the Spanish Grand Prix won the team their first points of the season.

It wasn’t a great weekend for team-mate Pastor Maldonado, who was still running into people and generally being a danger to everyone around him but in the relative safety of in-season testing on Wednesday the Venezuelan had a much better day.

Maldonado set a time of 1minute 24.871s on the Pirelli super-softs at the end of the a session which totalled 102 laps.

That time was fast enough to top the days sessions, but it was the 102 laps of running which was even more pleasing for a team which has struggled thus far this season.

‘We ran to plan and completed everything we wanted to do, We learnt a lot more about the car, the set-up and performance is improving all the time so I’m feeling more comfortable to push too.

‘It’s been a big step forward today which hopefully means we’ll be much better for the rest of the season.’ Maldonado told Sky Sports on Wednesday.

Lotus Trackside Operations Director Alan Permane added: ‘We completed everything we set out to do today including aero assessments, mapping work, energy recovery scenarios, evaluations of set-up and ride height, tyre usage programmes and so on and I’m pleased to say the E22 didn’t miss a beat.