The Team Lotus squad are aiming for strong finishes in the Italian Grand Prix by continuing their sudden burst of reliability in the Belgian Grand Prix, admitting that they will not be able to challenge F1's establishment on pace.
Lotus have suffered from a poor reliability record throughout 2011 so far, and posted double retirements in the recent British and Hungarian GPs.
But in Spa two weeks ago, the team got both cars to the finish, albeit down in 14th and 15th places for Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen respectively.
And after that double finish, team boss Tony Fernandes believes that the team should be aiming for the same in Monza, and hope that they can benefit from issues for the teams ahead of them.
The factory staff were working right up until Friday night of the Belgian race weekend on reliability fixes, to ensure we did not see a repeat of the problems we had in Hungary and Germany," he explained in the team's race preview.
"So the fact both cars finished well, particularly after being involved in the collisions at the first corner, is testament to a job very well done by the factory team."
He went on: "This weekend we are not going to be challenging the teams ahead quite yet in outright pace.
"But clever use of strategy and very strong drives from both Heikki and Jarno gives us a chance to hold our own in the race.
"So the target for Monza has to be to maintain the reliability record established in Spa and look for another two car finish at the chequered flag, as high as we can reasonably hope.
"That is a realistic target, and that is the approach we bring to everything related to our team."
Meanwhile, Kovalainen remained confident that the team would maintain their "aggressive" approach that saw him make it through to Q2 in the Spa qualifying session.
"Monza is another different challenge for us and it'll be good going there on the back of such a strong weekend in Spa," the Finnish driver beamed.
"It has different downforce requirements to most of the rest of the tracks we race on, but we'll go there with the same sort of aggressive strategy we used well in Spa to put us into Q2."
Team mate Trulli added: "The car felt really good in Spa, and I know we have the revised power steering system I used in Hungary back for this race, so I think we'll be ok.
"We had very strong race pace in Belgium, and if we can carry on like that in Italy we'll be just fine."
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