Lotus pleased with 'respectable' start

Lotus was satisfied with its performance in its first Formula 1 practice day in Bahrain today, and confident it had done a respectable job on its debut.The Anglo-Malaysian squad was the quickest of the new teams by the end of the afternoon, with drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli jumping ahead of Virgin's Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi at the end of second practice.Although Lotus was still 5s off the pace, Kovalainen felt his squad had acquitted itself well and done exactly what it needed to do at this stage in its development."If we can find three or four seconds it would be pretty good wouldn't it " the Finn joked."We'll be working hard, but we don't know what everyone else has done yet - what kind of fuel loads they've run. "We've just focused on our own preparation today like a professional racing team does."We've prepared the tyres, we've done various checks with the set-up, tried to tune the car to the circuit, so that's what we're really worried about."I'm sure eventually we can close the gap to the leaders - that's what we're here for - but it won't happen overnight."The teams ahead of us are all good teams, but I think after today we can go full steam ahead with our chin up."Technical director Mike Gascoyne agreed that Lotus could end the day with its head held high."Everyone worked very hard and it was satisfying to see us first out on track and then put in a solid performance throughout the day," he said. "We tried an aero upgrade this afternoon and we'll look at the results of that in this afternoon's debrief, but now we're looking forward to putting in another professional performance tomorrow in qualifying.