Jarno Trulli has admitted that he has been frustrated with his start to the 2010 season, after being plagued by bad luck and reliability.
The Lotus driver has struggled with reliability issues all year and has only once seen the chequered flag. Although the Italian expected a difficult start with the new team, he says he expected to have had more track time.
“Obviously I knew that it wouldn’t be easy, that everything would be new and we would need time,” Trulli told Autosprint magazine.
“However, I had expected at least to drive. Instead, after four races I did not start once and when I got to the finish, it was because it was decided I should take the chequered flag but in far from ideal conditions.
“Bad luck seems to persevere on my car, everything happens on my car and my car only. So, to this day, my expectations have not been met.
“It’s still early days to judge, we need more time for a reliable judgement. I knew it would be tough, but I practically haven’t driven yet. I’ll pass judgement at the end of the year.”
So far Trulli has struggled to match his team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen who has managed a set of 13th, 14th and 15th place finishes to date. As a result, the Italian says that he must aim to get onto terms with the Finn and that Lotus is the best of the new teams to accomplish this.
“On paper, our team is definitely the best among the new outfits in F1,” he said. “We operate like a real team in the top series, but unfortunately we are only at 10% of our potential because of lack of time.
“There’s no testing, and the racing weekend is the only chance to test and oil the structure. For us this is our apprenticeship year: we’ll see the potential in 2011, when many structural problems will be behind and we’ll be able to concentrate on the design of the new car.
“My aim today is to stay ahead of my team-mate and to lead among the new teams. The rest is just dreaming: you can think of getting into Q2, but you need a disaster to happen, like it did in Malaysia.”
