Heikki Kovalainen has denied saying his Lotus T127 is worse than the Minardi he tested in 2003.
Kovalainen’s quotes in the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat were reported on several websites yesterday.
The Finnish driver criticised the coverage using his Twitter account saying:
Seen some news from Finnish media about Lotus/Minardi, comments taken out of context, not fair for our team, gonna combat it big time now!
Heikki Kovalainen
Kovalainen tested a Minardi PS03 at Vallelunga in December 2003. The car was typically three to five seconds off the pace during Grands Prix that year.
Last week his team mate Jarno Trulli admitted Lotus were four seconds behind their rivals.
But in a boost for the team today it has announced a sponsorship deal with American news channel CNN, whose logos will appear on the T127s during the 2010 season.
Read more: The 2010 F1 grid on Twitter
Nirupam
2nd March 2010, 10:17
IMO Kovi is being a little too generous for his team. I mean being more than 4s off the pace clearly does not help (though its only testing, but still…)
ajokay
2nd March 2010, 11:12
Well, CNN red will certainly clash with Lotus green and yellow.
Hopefully it’ll just be a white logo against the green, so as to not ruin the livery.
DC
2nd March 2010, 11:22
The CNN deal is another blow to the USF1 concept. These big American sponsors should have went to USF1 if they had their act together.
BBQ2
2nd March 2010, 12:19
USF1 still have other opportunities …… erm… like AIG? :-)
Plink Plonk Plunk
2nd March 2010, 15:46
That was my first thought as well.
Calum
2nd March 2010, 16:34
Or Fan/Fred, or Lehman bros.
Face it, since the fiancial meltdown, companies like banks and insurance dealers have lessened the amount of money they invest in sport.
AIG was with Manchester Utd, now they are leaving.
RBS are leaving Williams when the deal runs out.
The only bank that bucks the trend is Banco Santander. They sponsor the most F1 races and have got the most logos on the Ferrari!
If RBS had the money, it would have payed for British GP rights. Whats it doing instead? Putting huge logos outside airports and sponsoring a rugby tournament (again, just fulfilling its contract)!
TMFOX
2nd March 2010, 12:26
If Lotus have the backing that they have then closing that ‘4 second gap’ shouldn’t be a huge problem.
Scribe
2nd March 2010, 18:12
Lotus are four seconds behind now but consider how new that car is. It’s remarkable that thats all they are behind.
I think they’ll be comfortable midfielders by next year.
Arun.India
2nd March 2010, 12:42
Minardi is also a very prestigious team like lotus.Minardi were always crowd favourites so i don’t think anything is wrong.
Dougie
2nd March 2010, 13:07
I don’t understand all this negativity towards Lotus and the fact they are 4 seconds off the pace.
Personally I’m impressed that in significantly less than a year, Lotus have built up the infrastructure and team required, designed, built and crash tested the car, and got in on the track for the second offical test… and are ONLY 4 seconds off the pace.
Even the big guns, who have all of this in place, and ONLY had to deal with a handful of rule changes last year in comparison, got it wrong last year… McLaren, Ferrari and BMW… only McLaren with all their experience and money turned it round. Toyota, the biggest wallet on the grid, spent countless years and never got a win or much else to show for it.
So, to you all I say lets rejoice that Lotus (in name, if not quite in spirit… yet) is back, and has completed a minor miracle in 20% of the time it has taken USF1 to produce… well, next to nothing really.
I say again, ONLY 4 seconds off the pace… my hat is off to them, great effort guys… here’s to Bahrain.
ps. any comparisons to BAR/Honda/Brawn are null and void… ultimately it took them 10 years to get a title winning car, and only then after a year of preparing for a “handful of rule changes”.
Robert McKay
2nd March 2010, 13:50
“I say again, ONLY 4 seconds off the pace… my hat is off to them, great effort guys… here’s to Bahrain.”
I’m with you.
I’ve seen a lot of comments about Virgin and Lotus will be “unsafe”, that they will be lapped “umpteen times” and that they will “ruin the professionalism” of F1 by being “the new Lola”.
Firstly, hats off that they’ve built their cars so quickly, when the budget cap they applied under never materialised, and the economy for sponsor-hunting is abysmal. 4 seconds in that context is excellent.
Secondly, how quickly people forget the likes of Minardi being 3-5 seconds off the pace, they were hardly quick but the sport somehow managed to not crash into them when they did get lapped a couple of times max, and even Minardi were able to have their days in the sun on occasion. I remember Super Aguri turning up in Melbourne with some old Arrows chassis and being a good few seconds off the pace but they too made progress quickly, made impacts in some races and people liked them (sticking it to Honda a few times helped too).
Thirdly, if you go back just a little further the gap between front and back was up to 9 or 10 seconds. We had really shocking poor teams and drivers. But they did offer the sport some needed character. Lotus and Virgin will not be anything like, say, Lola 1997 or Andrea Moda or Life/Pacific/whomever.
It’s only literally in the last year or two that the field has become supercompressed into 2-2.5 seconds of spread.
And whilst it would be slightly depressing seeing one team 1-1.5 seconds off the back, the fact we’ve got at least two fighting with each other and hopefully at least one more means there is interest there.
And they will push on from that. But every team needs a start point.
Red Andy
2nd March 2010, 16:40
In 2006, Super Aguri started the year about 5 seconds off the pace. The previous year, Jordan and Minardi were regularly about 3 seconds off the pace. By contrast, Forti were about 10 or 11 seconds down on the leaders when they started out in 1995. Though Forti in particular caused some frustration (after winning in Argentina, Damon Hill was reported to have asked, “How many Fortis were out there today?”), there is no real cause for suggesting that having slower cars out on the track will be dangerous. Just look at the speed differentials that they cope with at Le Mans.
ajokay
2nd March 2010, 17:25
I miss Forti, I really do.
F1withMySon
2nd March 2010, 15:01
Well said, Dougie. Agreed.
MarkC
2nd March 2010, 16:18
Exactly.
CNN agree with you too, clearly.
GeeMac
4th March 2010, 14:00
The voice of reason!
Rennan
2nd March 2010, 21:30
C’mon now… McLaren was 2.5s off the pace during testing lst year, and they had a LOT more resources, personel and time to build th car.. of course, they could catch up.. but the car was crap anyway..
It’s almost surprising that Lotus is only 4s off the pace, considering how extreme was the circumstances during the car develpment.. give them 3~5 years with a budget cap, I think they are capable of doing and incredible job
Patrickl
2nd March 2010, 23:13
They weren’t off by 2.5s. I guess you are quoting James Allen with his poor research (or need for sensationalism) cherry picking the worst gap from the 2009 pre season tests.
They were off by well over a second and that was bad enough.
After they activated their double diffuser they actually weren’t off by more than a few tenths (with the exception of Turkey and UK).
GeeMac
4th March 2010, 14:03
Trulli said they were 4 seconds off the pace aswell.
wasiF1
3rd March 2010, 1:23
Both Lotus & Virgin will bring those old days where we used ti have some cars 3-5 seconds slower than the leading cars.
Jonty
3rd March 2010, 8:55
Any one who thought that any new team could come straight in and be up with the establiished teams must have been living in ‘cloud cuckoo land’.
Obviously it will take time but full marks to Virgin and Lotus for getting there!
The lack of the use of a windtunnel at Virgin will be interesting. Wind tunnels are an incredibly expensive resource and although they have helped develop some major breakthroughs, they have also been known to lead some major teams up the garden path.
I hope that we will be able to watch Lotus and Virgin slowly but surely catch up with the others. It may take a few years but if they are really in it for the long haul it could happen.
The Cosworth engine could be the make or break factor, I hope it will be good, we had fantastic racing back in the days when nearly everyone was using a Cosworth and it is very important to have an engine supply that any team can acceess if need be, especially with manufacturers drifting away from the sport/business
Chaz
8th March 2010, 17:57
I suspect he said it off the record and the “journalist” decided to publish it anyway…
Bookmarked
10th March 2010, 14:42
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