Bahrain F1 test: Lotus needs luck to finish Australian Grand Prix

The team had to miss the first test at Jerez completely, and has only managed 1288 kilometres of running across the Bahrain fortnight, amid the litany of technical problems afflicting all Renault teams.

Asked what Lotus's chances of finishing the Australian GP were, technical director Nick Chester replied: "I think we've got to have a few things align.

"We've had days when the power unit has been fine and something else has let us down.

"I think we're going to need a bit of luck and all the bits to line up right for us.

"I know Renault Sport are working very hard on fixes and I'm sure they'll be bringing fixes and new specs to Melbourne that hopefully will give us a much better chance."

Chester admitted that not all the problems were Renault's responsibility.

"Most of the issues that have stopped us this week have been on the power unit side but we have had a couple of issues on our side," he said.

"We had some exhaust failures earlier in the week. We think we understand them now. We've got a different spec of exhaust coming for Melbourne and we think we know why they were cracking. It was one of our parts, we still make the whole system."

Romain Grosjean could only complete 65 laps across his two days of Bahrain running this week.

"We did as much as we could from the little amount of running that we had," said Grosjean.

While he admitted that the sole reason he thought he might finish in Melbourne was "optimism", the Frenchman insisted Lotus had managed to make some progress.

"Every time we stopped we tried to improve and there are things that went in the right direction, which is nice.

"I think it's even more complicated than everyone thought with this power unit and there is a lot of work on our side and the Renault side.

"It's far from being ideal or good. We tried to get every opportunity on track to improve what we could and understand the brake-by-wire, this new power unit and the management of the charge.

"There are two weeks before Australia and hopefully there's some brightness in the future."