Q & A with Jarno Trulli

Jarno Trulli believes the slimmer car will be a huge boost for the team, as he told AUTOSPORT.

Q. You had received a new chassis for Valencia, how did you find it?

Jarno Trulli: Better. It was definitely a better weekend for me even though it didn't finish the way I wanted. At least in terms of the car performance it was better. It had a better feeling in general.

Q. Did that better feeling come from the new chassis?

JT: It's just that things worked out pretty well straight away and I had a better feeling with the car, so I don't whether there was anything wrong with the last chassis but I never really had a good feeling [with it].

Q. Are you feeling happy with your season now?

JT: I never felt frustrated, to be honest. I am just waiting for next year. Obviously this year is a transitional season. You need to start with a new team and you need to build up a lot of things but nevertheless I always felt that there was potential in this team and I am pretty sure that next year will be better. Obviously we have to go through this year which is pretty difficult, because the team in general started very late. It has to build up everything from the structure back at the factory, the engineers, and there was nothing to start with. It was a pretty tough start.

Q. Lotus has updates this weekend, what are the extent of the updates?

JT: Aerodynamically I wouldn't say it is a big improvement, it's still good but I wouldn't expect to go much quicker just from aero-wise. But in terms of weight-loss, it is going to be a huge help. We are going to get a much lighter car which will help us to move the weight distribution forward and in terms of handling it is going to be much better. So the combination of the aero package a light-weight package I believe it will have a big impact.

Q. How much of an impact will it have on driver confidence with the car?

JT: We hope so and we are not finished yet because we are missing the suspension which will lose us a further four kilos. That will not be ready for this weekend and will probably better for the next one.

Q. Which parts of the car are new for this weekend?

JT: All the bodywork, the gearbox and a lot of the stuff around the car that is quite a lot lighter.

Q. So you expect to be a lot closer to the rest of the field?

JT: We expect to make a step and we expect obviously to be closer but as everybody moves forward, we try to move as well. So we don't know how much closer we can be.