Lotus targets diffuser boost for Spain

With a number of outfits working hard on implementing their own version of the concept pioneered by Red Bull Racing, Team Lotus has high hopes that the performance boost it should get from the update will lift it firmly into the midfield battle.

Heikki Kovalainen told AUTOSPORT: "We know there are big chunks of performance potentially coming if we nail it. We are working on it, and hopefully we will get it for Spain.

"The feeling is that there should be some good numbers coming from there, so I look forward to that. Hopefully we can unlock it and get it working properly."

Kovalainen sees no reason why Team Lotus cannot make big progress before then too, as he feels the team still has good performance to come for when it finally gets on top of the power-steering issues that have hampered it in the first two races of the season.

"In Malaysia we delivered exactly what we were hoping for, and if you look at the midfield most teams have been stuck there," he said.

"After that is the tough one, to then break into top ten. That is when it will get tricky for us as well and we still need to grow. We need better facilities; we need more people in the team. We still need to grow and we are still a young team.

"But I think to join the group and battle inside the group, we are almost there. We just need some decent upgrades, bigger than the opponents hopefully, and also sort out the reliability issues - we still have problems with the power steering as well - and it is affecting us even a little bit when it is performing well.

"So when you put all those fixes in place, then I think we can genuinely start racing the guys ahead of us, which will be fantastic."