We need a special mention to Heikki Kovalainen for getting the Lotus into Q2 on pure merit! In the past it was just becuase of people dropping out due to crash or failure however this time it was on pure pace. Good job Lotus - they just need to improve reliability now!
i hope lotus have a mid table car by next year otherwise it might be another year at the back of the grid for Heikki
After his years at McLaren and Renualt where he hardly set the world alight, maybe he has now earnt the right to be with a top team again? He needs to really look at what happens with Lotus next year before his chances fade away again and he gets trapped like Glock will.
It was in the rain though. However, Lotus are finally almost on the pace of the Williamses and Saubers it looks like - and good for them too!
Because they're abysmally slow. These newer teams, we aren't talking about minardi slow, at least they could challenge and score the occasional point, we're talking Forti slow. Mobile chicanes, to put it.
I think its because they wont get to the front, we all can pretty much gather this, and if they had a different team name then I think they wouldnt be getting so much fans saying they will be at the front in the near future. As much as we dont want to say it, names are alot in F1, if Lotus and HRT were swapped in terms of performance, people would be giving Lotus a chance, unlike HRT. I wouldnt say get them out, but I cant see them being much higher than 7th or 8th in about 5 years.
You can't make the slow teams fast so its either have a small grid (Mclaren, Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault) or let a few slower teams in and see how they develop.
To be fair to those teams, when they applied, they were under the impression that the FIA were implementing a £40m budget cap and help to get them up to a competitive level. Then they had 6 months to develop their first car and they've been trying to develop off those initial poor readouts ever since. Frankly for any of them to get as close as Lotus have to the back of the main pack in two years (on what has to be a pretty sh*te budget by the looks of things) deserves applause, because I think technology is at such a level it's now impossible to enter F1 and immediately be competitive.
I think this is a bit unfair to be honest, especially on Team Lotus. At Spa both Trulli and Kovalainen finished ahead of Barrichello, and were only lapped once. Irrespective of the way the race panned out (and in Team Lotus' favour, the 2 of them collided in T1), it's impressive for a team in their second year in the sport to achieve that. Do you class Williams as being mobile chicanes? Kovalainen battled hard and managed to hold off Barrichello for the last few laps of the race, despite the obscenely big DRS zone and the lack of KERS on the Lotus, which to me isn't the work of a mobile chicane. Earlier in the season, at China Kovalainen beat Perez and Maldonado, which again, is impressive given the resources available to them. Yes, Virgin and HRT (if we're covering all the new teams) haven't made the same progress, but they've still made a step forward from last year, and maybe within a couple of seasons will become fully fledged members of the midfield. Having these teams has brought more jobs, sponsorship, and money in general into F1, and the battles at the back of the pack are another thing for fans at the circuit to enjoy (even if they are criminally under-represented on TV). Bar Webber/Kovalainen at Valencia last year, when have the new teams posed a really serious issue to the top teams?
spot on, i remember when force india and toro rosso were backmarkers, red bull were middle field and renault were the pace setters eventually some teams will make faster car and some will lose their edge and that is what formula one is all about
