Lotus boss 'dreaming' of Q2 effort

Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen qualified in 19th and 20th positions, but Fernandes was upbeat about the gap to the leading teams.

And the team boss reckons there is still half a second to extract from the car this season.

"All in all today's been another good day and it proves to me that our future is very bright," said Fernandes. "To be honest I was starting to dream about Q2, and while we may still be a little bit off that we're clearly getting closer and closer, and thinking back to where we started, that's incredible.

"We need to work on giving Jarno more confidence in the car, and perhaps today we could have got more from Heikki's tyres, but I think there's still more to come from the 2010 car - maybe even another 0.5 seconds.

"Tomorrow will be all about getting two cars home, and I know our team has the experience and strength to do that."

He also praised the progress made by the team since the start of the season.

"Today we were just 3.2 seconds off the pace of the Red Bulls in Q1 and if you cast your mind back 10 short weeks to Bahrain you can see just how far we've come," he added.

"There we were over five seconds away from the outright Q1 pace and anyone in the sport will tell you what an achievement it is to find nearly two seconds in just seven races.

"We were also just 2.4 seconds off Ferrari, celebrating their 800th race in Turkey, which is pretty spectacular for a team who are only seven races old - I think that shows to all those who expressed doubts about our participation that they were wrong."