"THE TEAM NEEDS TO KEEP PREPARING THE CAR CAREFULLY AS THEY HAVE DONE ALL YEAR"

James Allison looks ahead to the Yas Marina Circuit, a track not expected to naturally favour the R31

James Allison Technical Director, Lotus Renault GP

Photo by: xpb.cc

What's your assessment of the team's performance at the Indian Grand Prix now you have been able to reflect on it?

I am as fed up about it now as I was in the immediate aftermath of the race. In every session of the weekend it was clear that the car had sufficient pace for a good result on Sunday. Despite this, poor qualifying laps from both cars, Vitaly's penalty from Korea, Bruno losing his KERS in the race and a few mistakes from both drivers led to us coming home empty handed.

What can be done to improve matters for the final two races of the year?

The team needs to keep preparing the car carefully as they have done all year. We need to keep making clean pitstops; an area where our crew have made very clear improvement over the course of the year. We need to ensure that we continue to make competitive starts. Most importantly, however, we must do everything possible to make sure that the potential in the car is realised on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. In this last area the main input must come from the drivers who are extremely keen to ensure that we have a clean and successful end to the season.

You've said that the Yas Marina circuit layout may not favour our car - why is this?

Our car performs relatively better in high speed corners at tracks which place a fair burden on the front tyres. Yas Marina is biased towards lower speed corners which place a larger emphasis on rear tyre and traction performance.

How is our engine allocation looking now there are just two races left and does this impact on our race weekend strategy at all?

Our engine allocation is fine. The Renault Sport units have performed flawlessly this year and we are able to perform both of the final races with no restrictions on our strategy whatsoever.