Karun Chandhok is confident he can unlock more lap time over the weekend after his first day as a Lotus race driver ahead of the German Grand Prix.
Chandhok is replacing Jarno Trulli this weekend for a one-off race at the wheel of the Lotus T128. He completed 42 laps over both Friday practice sessions and set the 20th fastest time in the afternoon session. But Chandhok said his first full day in the car had not been about setting lap records.
"That was good day of learning," he said. "The main area I've been looking at is the brakes - we use a different material here to my previous team so I think that's why I've maybe ended up with quite a lot of square tyres today!
"I had a few moments under braking, and a couple of lock-ups, but that's what today was about - getting used to the tyres and the brakes and easing myself into a place where I can start to push."
Chandhok finished the day 1.495s off his experienced team-mate Heikki Kovalainen, but did make significant progress between the first and second session.
"Over the day I improved my time from this morning by over 1.5 seconds, so I'm pleased with that, and now I'll work with the engineers to find more time and keep pushing forwards tomorrow."
Lotus chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne said Chandhok had done exactly what was asked of him.
"He was obviously on a steep learning curve so we wanted to give him a chance to work on the tyres, both over a single lap and on long runs and he acquitted himself very well in both sessions," he said. "He and Heikki were struggling to warm up the front tyres, especially on the harder compound, but we can work on that and look forward to tomorrow."
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