Lotus E22 nose and front wing. Formula One Testing, Day One, Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir, Bahrain, Wednesday, 19 February 2014 © Sutton Images. No reproduction without permission
With Lotus having chosen to skip last month’s opening Spanish session to focus on factory development work, their new machine, which features a radical split-nose design, rolled out at Sakhir with Romain Grosjean at the wheel.
Grosjean will complete the opening two days of the four-day session, before handing over to new team mate Pastor Maldonado, who arrived from Williams over the off season to replace Kimi Raikkonen, now at Ferrari.
Lotus completed a successful shakedown of the E22 at Jerez last week, reportedly experiencing few if any of the power unit problems that plagued the other Renault teams at the first pre-season test.