» Lotus lacking downforce, according to Heikki

Heikki Kovalainen has admitted that his 2010 Lotus carries a fundamental downforce problem, as he completed his test in the car at the bottom of the timesheets on his second test outing for the team today.

With team-mate Jarno Trulli set to take over for tomorrow’s running, Heikki summarised the car’s deficiencies as follows:

"I think the main issue is the downforce," he told reporters. "We have not been able to develop the aero package as we should have; we had five months to build the car and everything’s been a bit conservative. Before they started to design the car, they had no information about the engine, so cooling and everything is quite conservative.

"For sure, we can improve – just by looking at the car I could probably improve a few things; I’m sure we will be able to do this but it’ll just take a little time."

I’ll bet the team’s Technical Director, Mike Gascoyne would be thrilled with this rather brutal summary of his latest F1 challenger!

"I think it’s quite clear that we’re lacking downforce compared to the quickest cars. It’s not surprising, we expected it – but just looking at the numbers we knew where we were going to be," Heikki added.

Anyone care to place a bet on how much of a bollocking Heikki will get for saying this?

[Original image via GP Update]