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Australian GP: Lotus and Marussia break curfew on Saturday morning

The Lotus and Marussia Formula 1 teams broke curfew on Saturday morning, as they battled to prepare their cars in time for the final practice session at the Australian Grand Prix

Lotus endured a fraught Friday in Melbourne with a gearbox leak keeping Romain Grosjean out of FP1, before software problems, turbo issues and a suspension failure disrupted his second session.

Electrical problems ruined team-mate Pastor Maldonado's first session and also kept him out of FP2, while rival squad Marussia encountered electrical problems on Jules Bianchi's car and a series of minor issues that disrupted Max Chilton's day.

"We got pretty limited running again through pretty minor problems that take a little while to change, but most people seemed to have those sorts of issues," said Chilton.

The FIA confirmed on Saturday morning that both teams had decided to continue working beyond the 0500 curfew, thus using up one of six exceptions permitted to each team for the season.

Maldonado's Lotus has also been fitted with a new electronic-kinetic control unit, a new electronic-heat control unit, and a new energy store, thus using up one of five permitted changes of each engine component across the season.

Caterham has installed new CE-K and ES units in Marcus Ericsson's car, and a new ES in team-mate Kamui Kobayashi's car, but did not break curfew as it fought to recover from a disastrous day on Friday.

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