The Lotus team hopes that the weather will not cause as many problems in the air as on the ground tonight as several parts are flown into Jerez follow Heikki Kovalainen's accident on Thursday. Having crashed shortly after 1 o'clock, the Finn and his team was forced to sit out for the remainder of the day.
With the car in the tyre barriers and no necessary replacement parts available, Lotus was presented with no option but to work in other areas after its car was returned to the pit lane on a flatbed lorry. "It was just my mistake," Heikki freely admitted later on.
"Coming out of Turn 2 and into 3, I got on the power a little bit too aggressively, lost the rear, corrected and went into the gravel and then head-on into the wall - that damaged the nose, my mistake."
Although his lap amount for the day was cemented at 30 from that moment onwards, the former Renault and McLaren driver remains positive over the Cosworth-powered T127. "I think the potential is there," he continued. "My initial feeling this morning was a good one; in the low-speed corners the car is behaving quite well but it is lacking grip. In the high-speed corners I think we lose quite a lot of time, partly because of the setup problems.
"The car is still a little bit heavy and so we need to make it lighter to be able to move the balance around. Otherwise, it feels quite okay. I actually enjoyed driving it from the beginning, apart from the hydraulic problem that we had this morning, but once we got going it was all okay."
Heikki will be back out on-track on Friday before team-mate Jarno Trulli takes the reigns as the weekend begins.
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