Lotus upgrades on schedule for Spain

The Hingham-based team is scheduled to introduce a major revamp to its car for the next race in Barcelona, but its hopes of a straightforward introduction were thrown into doubt because of the delays in getting equipment back to Europe.

However, with team owner Tony Fernandes having chartered one of his Air Asia planes to fly the team and other F1 personnel back to Europe on Wednesday night, and the freight due to arrive on Thursday, Gascoyne is confident there is plenty of time before Spain to get his cars ready.

"Firstly I want to say thanks, on behalf of the whole team, to Tony and Air Asia for literally taking us under their wings and getting us home so quickly," said Gascoyne. "With their help, we've faced minimal disruption to our travel plans, and have minimised the impact it could have had on our ability to work to our pre-Barcelona timetable. It was a great effort from everyone in Malaysia to help us out.

"We will go through our normal procedures to unpack all the freight that's arrived from China and will then turn our attention to applying the Barcelona update package to both cars. All in all, we're just glad to be home and able to focus on our jobs again, rather than worrying about the forces of nature."