Pastor Maldonado (VEN) Lotus E23 Hybrid crashes at the start

Lotus believe they would have beaten Red Bull in the Australian GP but for a pair of calamities at the start of the 2015 season curtain raiser and have targeted closing the gap to Williams in Malaysia.

While the luckless Pastor Maldonado was the casualty of a chain reaction when a gaggle of cars attempted to squeeze through the second corner, the race of Romain Grosjean, who had qualified just ahead of his Lotus team-mate in ninth, was over before it had even begun due to a crippling car failure off the line.

But despite their nightmare start to 2015, the Enstone outfit remain confident they should be able to regularly compete for points and perhaps even podiums this year.

“We are reasonably happy,” said technical director Nick Chester. “We look like we could be regular Q3 contenders but there is more that we want to be doing such as closing the gap to Williams and moving away more from the group behind us. There is more to do!”

After enduring a torrid struggle in 2014, when they only scored 10 points, Lotus have switched from Renault to Mercedes power for the new season and Chester believes that, but for their misfortunes, Grosjean and Maldonado would have finished ahead of Red Bull in Melbourne.

“The race was disappointing as without retirements both drivers would have scored a good chunk of points,” he said. “If we didn’t experience the unfortunate crash and the charge air system leak, we could probably have been looking at fifth and sixth positions. Both drivers had qualified ahead of Felipe Nasr who ended the race fifth and our long run performance on Friday looked good so there is no reason why our drivers could not have achieved that.”

Pastor Maldonado

The power unit of Renault, who supply Toro Rosso and Red Bull, is believed to be 100bhp down on the engine of Mercedes, a sizeable deficit which is likely to be particularly acute at the power-hungry Sepang circuit in Malaysia. Both Grosjean and Maldonado have also been effusively complimentary about the driveability of their new car after suffering at the wheel of the underpowered but inconsistent E22 in 2014 and Chester is confident the full potential of the E23 is still to be realised.

“It’s a brand new car and there is quite a lot of aero development work to do; we will be pushing developments all through the year for it,” he said. “We are happy as we have a good platform to work from. The drivers enjoy driving the E23; they find it is a consistent car they are able to push to the limit quite well. It’s great to have this basis to work from as it means that we can focus on adding performance.”

Sky Sports F1 will show every session from the Malaysia Grand Prix weekend live and available on the move with SkyGo. The race starts at 8am on Sunday March 29, with comprehensive build-up underway from 6:30am.