Tony Fernandes is thrilled with the amount of support from the mass crowds in England this weekend as he hopes to witness the first double Lotus finish since the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. The Tune Group entrepreneur discussed both this and more with GPUpdate.net’s Ivo Pakvis in the Silverstone paddock on Friday.
How did things go today Tony?
I wouldn’t say it was a great start to the weekend but it puts some perspective on how well we’ve done in the first half of the season.
We´re disappointed, though, as we didn’t get enough laps done and the gearbox kept failing. We’re constantly having problems with the hydraulics - we think we’ll have a solution for next year but we’ll just have to live with it this year.
Have you noticed anything special from the home crowd’s support here?
So far the crowds have been fantastic. I haven’t seen anything physically but I’ve received tons of emails and ‘Good lucks’ on Twitter and Facebook.
At Snetterton (Classic Team Lotus Day last month) there were 20,000 people and that was pretty amazing. I’m generally thrilled with that response and I just hope we can do it justice this weekend.
Do you think it’s surprising, how this new team is receiving so much support?
Amazing, yeah. I grew up watching Lotus at Brands Hatch and that’s where it all started. A year ago I met (Chief Technical Officer) Mike Gascoyne and this whole dream started - it's pretty amazing.
We spoke to Heikki (Kovalainen) earlier and he in particular seems very happy at Lotus - do you sense that as well?
Heikki and Jarno (Trulli) are both very good. Heikki’s really pumped up, I do think he’s very happy; hopefully we’ll have a long, long relationship together because I enjoy working with him, I enjoy his spirit and positive look on life, and hopefully we can give him a car that matches his driving ability.
So, no more updates coming now this season?
No, this is our last update. We haven’t been able to test it as much as we’d like to but every team has that same problem. McLaren, for example, has had some issues with their updates as well.
When you’re making the big jumps that we’ve had from Bahrain, it gets harder and harder, but we´ll see tomorrow - sometimes practice goes well and the race not so much, so let’s hope its the other way around this weekend! Let’s bring two cars home, it’s been a while.
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