Tony Fernandes has ruled out Team Lotus fighting with the midfield in next weekend's Italian GP, saying a realistic target is getting both cars home.
Team Lotus had a good run at the previous race in Belgium where Heikki Kovalainen made it into Q2, qualifying in 16th place.
And after a lap one incident with his own team-mate Jarno Trulli, the Finn went on to finish the race in 15th place while Trulli brought his car home in 14th.
It was the team's second best result of the Championship, just falling short of their Monaco performance. However, Fernandes has all but ruled out a repeat performance in Italy.
"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," he said.
"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.
"The plans for the future development of the team, and the group it sits in, are taking shape eactly as we want them to and we are setting ourselves reasonable goals that can be achieved through hard work, innovation and a little bit of luck."
Meanwhile, Kovalainen also concedes the team could find the going tough, however, he's hoping an aggressive strategy could pay off.
"Monza is another different challenge for us and it'll be good going there on the back of such a strong weekend in Spa.
"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."
