This is a nice peice about Lotus racing from the official Formula 1 website. All you doubting Thomases, take note!


Growing pains - are Lotus about to bloom?


As they looked ahead to their first season in Formula One racing, 2010’s three new teams faced a mountain to climb. It’s tough for any competitor to keep up, but when you’re up against rivals who have survived for decades, have seemingly unlimited resources at their disposal and have won countless championships, the nerves are bound to be jangling.

But for one new team the weight of expectation must have felt particularly heavy. We take a look at how those given leave to bring the celebrated Lotus name back to F1 are faring…

With seven championships, 79 race wins and 107 pole positions, Lotus remain one of the sport’s most successful constructors, having achieved glory with the likes of Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Ayrton Senna, after being set-up by Englishman Colin Chapman almost six decades ago. Although they had the support of Chapman’s family, Lotus’s new lease of life came courtesy of a partnership between the Malaysian government and a consortium of Malaysian entrepreneurs led by Air Asia boss Tony Fernandes. The team also boasted the technical nous of F1 veteran Mike Gascoyne, who had honed his skills during spells with Force India, McLaren, Sauber, Tyrrell, Jordan, Renault and Toyota.

Compared to the death knells resounding from one of the grid’s expected new entries, and HRT’s very last-minute driver announcement and rushed car launch, the unwrapping of Lotus’s Cosworth-powered T127 was an organised and glamorous affair. Although arriving just five months after the team were granted entry by the FIA, Gascoyne’s car was sensible, manageable, and at the same time supple enough to easily assume upgrades. Most importantly, it was ready early enough for the team to take part in two pre-season tests.

If the car’s design had been carefully considered, so too had the driver line-up. In former Toyota star Jarno Trulli and ex-McLaren pilot Heikki Kovalainen, the team had unexpectedly signed two Grand Prix winners, who had enough experience to bring weight to technical improvements, yet still enough hunger to push the car to its absolute limits. All in all, the team’s hopes to pick up a few points during the season, and nuzzle their way into the tail end of the established teams, didn’t look too overambitious.

It may have been 15 years since the Lotus name had last appeared on the F1 grid - at the 1994 Australian Grand Prix - but at the 2010 season opener in Bahrain, the team did their eminent name proud. Visits from former Lotus drivers (and world champions) Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti and Nigel Mansell seemed to do the trick and after qualifying in 20th and 21st places, they became the only new team to see both their cars classified on the Sunday. Although 15th-placed Kovalainen finished two laps down on Ferrari race winner Fernando Alonso, the team had met their objectives for the weekend and team principal Fernandes declared himself ‘over the moon’.

In Australia they again out-qualified fellow ‘newbies’ HRT and Virgin, and Kovalainen finished in 13th, but Trulli was stymied by another hydraulics problem. At the next event in Malaysia, Kovalainen made it through to Q2 for the first time, after cannily taking advantage of strategic errors from Ferrari and McLaren. But while they desperately wanted to impress on home turf, Trulli was embroiled in a Lap Three collision, finishing five laps down in P17, and Kovalainen’s T127 succumbed to hydraulic issues. But at April’s Chinese Grand Prix, they finally fought with the big boys, and a clever tyre choice saw Kovalainen eventually finish ahead of the Williams of Nico Hulkenberg.

It was just the encouragement the team needed as they headed back to Europe, for an upgrade package and the Spanish Grand Prix. In Barcelona they were comfortably the fastest new team, but a pre-race software issue for Kovalainen meant Trulli was the only driver to finish (in 17th). At the next two races, in Monaco and Turkey, the T127 was undoubtedly the quicker car but again technical gremlins meant its improving pace was overshadowed by retirements.

Last weekend in Canada, however, car, drivers, and team eventually came good. Not only did Kovalainen qualify barely two-tenths down on the BMW Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi to take 19th on the grid, but in the race itself the Finn’s fastest lap was under a tenth slower than the other BMW Sauber of Pedro de la Rosa. At one point he was running as high as sixth, and even though he eventually finished in 16th, excitingly he’d managed to hold the Renault of Vitaly Petrov at bay. Yes Trulli’s T127 once again succumbed to a technical issue (brake vibration), but in contrast established team BMW Sauber recorded their fifth double DNF of the year.

Of course Lotus’s Montreal showing once again confirmed that they are leading the way from fellow new teams Virgin and HRT (they lapped both), but it was also a very respectable performance in comparison to the midfield. The team were understandably thrilled.

“Heikki drove a fantastic race, fighting all the way with the guys in front, and kept it up right to the end to keep Petrov behind him,” said Gascoyne. “I think this weekend has been a massive step forward for the whole team. Rather than being just one of the new teams, we actually got stuck in and raced the teams ahead, which is what we wanted to do, so congratulations and thank you to the whole team for getting us to this position.”

Next week’s European Grand Prix in Valencia will be Lotus’s 500th, and the team will no doubt be hoping they can return the legendary marque back to the scoreboard. With just a few tenths in it, Lotus are starting to look like a real threat - any stragglers at the back of the midfield had better watch out.

Home turf - Malaysia

Aside from that they're meeting all the targets & it's great to see the Lotus name in GP again.

Not my words but those of Joe Saward. I agree totally having met Tony fernandez and Mike Gascoyne there is absolutely no doubt that they are passionate about this....

You can seethe original and full version HERE

Why Valencia is Lotus’s 500th Grand Prix
June 25, 2010 by Joe Saward
A number of people do not think that Lotus should be celebrating the celebrated marque’s 500th Grand Prix, arguing that Lotus racing has got nothing to do with the old Team Lotus and that it is just a piece of brand engineering. That is a matter of opinion, but I’ll explain why I think it is justified. It is all down to one man: Tony Fernandes. OK, so he is a Malaysian, but he is a very British Malaysian. Tony had been an F1 fan since his childhood and he understands the significance of the Lotus name, not just its marketing value.
“Lotus is a British brand and that will never change,” he says. “It’s just Malaysian finance. We think that makes sense. We wanted to break new ground in F1, open up the sport to a whole new audience, geographically and demographically, and, by being lean, hungry, innovative and passionate, achieve something incredible that would inspire people around the world to follow their own dreams.”
Tony dared to dream that Lotus could be revived, something which David Hunt failed to achieve in 15 years of trying, despite a decent track record of raising money in his racing days with Acorn Computers and Cellnet. Hunt was the first man to bring a mobile phone company into the sport. Fernandes managed to put the whole thing together with Malaysian money and in league with Proton, the owner of Lotus Cars – which granted him the right to use the Lotus Racing name. Racing purists may argue that it is not really Team Lotus, but Fernandes is intent on changing that view. The car is green and yellow. The team is based in Norfolk, not far from the old Lotus headquarters, and the chassis designation is T127, the next Lotus type number. I am told that he even tried to buy Ketteringham Hall, the old home of Team Lotus.

This is owned by the Chapman Family and has been divided into business units which are leased to companies.
Fernandes also sought out the blessing of the Chapman Family and when Colin Chapman’s son Clive asked him whether the new team’s first victory would be a first win for Lotus Racing or the 80th victory for Lotus, Tony was very clear. It would be Lotus’s 80th.
“I knew that bringing Lotus back to the grid would have an emotional pull for many fans who remember the likes of Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell and all those other great champions,” Fernandes says, “but I couldn’t have dreamt that we’d see the younger fans, whose parents may have talked about the old days, embrace us so quickly. “
Perhaps most important, however, is Fernandes’s approach, which is pure Lotus.
“In every business I work with I am very lucky to work alongside clever, hard working, passionate people who inspire me, drive me forward and make me laugh! I teach them to never take no for an answer, always push and never stop dreaming.”
Good people and great passion. And that is why he is a suitable heir to the legend of Team Lotus.

They should get him on the Group Lotus board instead of all those italian half wits

I agree, I hope the F1 team drives sales in the new economies they are thinking of in Asia, be nice to have British brand power in those markets, just a shame most of the world don't seem to know we lead the world in race car design and build