Lotus trackside operations director Alan Permane expects the team to make a further step forward at the Belgian Grand Prix.

Both Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean have been very competitive in recent races, with Raikkonen finishing second in both Germany and Hungary. Despite the mid-season break including a mandatory factory shutdown, Permane said Lotus would have updates in Spa which should improve the pace of the E21.

"Although we have had a decent gap of four weeks between races, two of those are eliminated by the enforced factory shutdown," Permane said. "This still leaves two weeks of course; a period of time sufficient to bring a few new parts to the table as we would normally do in such a gap.

"The advantage we have with Spa being so close geographically is that we can be working on the cars back at Enstone right up until the Tuesday night before the race, and still have sufficient time to get them to the circuit ready for work on Thursday morning. We've got several updates coming up - both mechanical and aerodynamic - so we're confident of making another step forward."

With Lotus having raced its Drag Reduction Device (DRD) at Silverstone, Permane agreed it would be suited to Spa too.

"Absolutely. We haven't made a final decision yet as to whether it will be deployed, but we've been conducting a lot of simulation work with the concept to help clarify that decision and there's a good chance we'll see it make an appearance."

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