Lotus F1 boss Gerard Lopez has sold a 35% stake in the team to Infinity Racing, a consortium of investors with US and Middle Eastern backgrounds. The team hopes that this investment will give the team the financial boost it needs to challenge current top dogs Red Bull and Ferrari for wins and championships. Lopez’ Genii Capital concern will continue to hold a controlling stake of 65% in the team and Lopez remains as Chairman and his partner Eric Lux as a director. Infinity’s chairman is Mansoor Ijaz and the deputy chairman is Suhail Al Dhaheri, CEO of the Abu More…

The Lotus F1 team has today announced that technical director James Allison is to leave the team and that Nick Chester has succeeded him as technical director. While Chester’s credentials for the role are unquestionably strong, the loss of an innovator like James Allison is a blow to the team, which has made great progress in the last two years on a significantly lower budget than the other front running teams. Allison is much in demand among the top F1 teams in an engineering arms race as F1 heads to a new formula from 2014 onwards. Under Allison Lotus has More…

One of the biggest surprises in Saturday’s qualifying session for the Bahrain Grand Prix was the performance of the Lotus cars, with Kimi Raikkonen 9th fastest and Romain Grosjean 11th. They were the pace setters on Friday, set the fourth fastest time in Saturday morning practice and Raikkonen set a competitive Q2 time in 1m 33.146, the third fastest time in that session. So what happened? According to Lotus’ Trackside Operations Director, Alan Permane, the result is something of a mystery. They believed – and many other teams agreed with the view – that Raikkonen could win this race, based More…

Kimi Raikkonen, the winner of the Australian Grand Prix, eradicated any doubts that his Melbourne performance was due to exceptional weather and track conditions by topping the time sheets in Sepang on Day 1 of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend. With track temperatures over 30 degrees, the 33 year old Finn edged out Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull and Felipe Massa’s Ferrari, but the margins were tight; just 9/100ths of a second separated first and third. Lotus’ technical director James Allison confirmed that only Raikkonen had the new updates on his car today, with Romain Grosjean thus disadvantaged. Lotus has a More…

Lotus became the first F1 team to unveil its new car, when it pulled the wraps off the E21 in front of an audience live online via You Tube and on Sky Sports News in the UK. The launch was handled by team owner Gerard Lopez and team principal Eric Boullier, while technical director James Allison together with the drivers Romain Grosjean and Kimi Raikkonen pulled the wraps off the car. Raikkonen said that he believes the team has what it takes to win the world title. Boullier said third place is the target for the 2013 season, which is More…

The Lotus F1 Team has announced that it will pull the covers of its 2013 challenger, the E21, in an online ceremony on Monday 28th January, making it the first 2013 Formula 1 contender to break cover. Fans can join in the fun, as the whole event will be streamed live from the team’s base in Enstone; the launch will be broadcast on the team’s YouTube channel – http://www.youtube.com/lotusf1team – from 19:15 (GMT) / 20:15 (CET). We will have technical analysis of the new car soon after the launch here on JA on F1. So be sure to check in More…

Lotus F1 boss Gerard Lopez has set his team a bold objective for this season: finish in the top three of the Constructors’ championship table this year and end the season on the same level as the best teams. Last season Lotus ended up fourth after a strong year, particularly with Kimi Raikkonen, who was third in the Drivers’ standings ahead of both McLaren drivers. But if their other driver Romain Grosjean had been more consistent they might have gone some way towards bridging the 75 point gap to McLaren. The Frenchman scored just 96 points compared to his team More…

Lotus has finally confirmed that Romain Grosjean will retain his seat at the team for next season, with the Frenchman vowing to put the lessons learnt from his turbulent 2012 into practice. Although the 26-year-old had been expected to be kept on alongside Kimi Raikkonen for a second straight season the delay in the reconfirmation suggested the Enstone team’s hierarchy was carefully taking its time to ensure Grosjean was ready to make improvements in 2013. As while the Frenchman, after resurrecting his career in GP2 following his brief ill-fated initial F1 stint with the same team in 2009, showed his More…

Kimi Raikkonen was his usual enigmatic self this evening after taking his first win since 2009 in his comeback season with Lotus. Asked, “How long will your celebrations of this win last ?” the notoriously bibulous Finn said, “I have almost two weeks. As long as I manage to get myself to the next race I think the team is happy. Maybe I will try to get home at some point.” However this light hearted response belies his general tone when speaking about his win after today’s race; he has been refusing to get carried away, describing it as “just More…

Kimi Raikkonen will drive for the Lotus F1 team again next season, a move which was widely anticipated, after no real sign that he was in the running for a seat at Ferrari, McLaren Red Bull or Mercedes, all of whom have confirmed their drivers this summer. There is no word in the statement about the future of Lotus’ other driver Romain Grosjean. Raikkonen’s comeback from two years away in rallying has been very impressive, he lies third in the drivers championship, the after a competitive season, with six podiums among 16 points scoring results out of 17 races. Only More…

During his first Formula 1 career Kimi Raikkonen’s dislike for sponsor and media engagements was almost as well-chronicled as his achievements on the track. But second time round, and with perhaps a greater freedom and desire to go in his own direction, the 2007 world champion has become involved in something very different with a clothing company from his homeland in Finland. Makia Clothing has signed the Lotus driver to be the ‘face’ of its new motorsport range and to launch the partnership has got the 33-year-old to star in a viral video campaign. The first teaser clip played on More…

Jerome D’Ambrosio will race in place of the suspended Romain Grosjean’s for Lotus at this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, the team has as expected confirmed, marking the former Virgin driver’s competitive return to a race environment for the first time since the end of last season. Although some of the bigger name drivers currently on the F1 sidelines were immediately linked to the one-off drive after Grosjean’s one-race ban for causing Sunday’s first-corner pile-up at Spa was announced, it was logical that Lotus would turn to their well-regarded Belgian test and reserve driver to fill the void at Monza. The More…

The Summer break has dragged on, with all F1 factories shut down for two weeks since the last Grand Prix. But that does not mean that nothing has been happening. Behind the scenes F1 is moving forward on several fronts, at the same time as keeping an eye on the prosecutor’s office in Munich for any signs of a follow up to the conviction of Gerhard Grobkowsky, who said he had accepted a “bribe” from F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone. The teams are closing in on a deal to secure their involvement for the medium term, the next 8 years. More…

Formula 1 will move into a more environmentally-friendly era when the next generation engine formula is introduced in two years’ time and amid on-going attempts by teams to improve their own sustainability and efficiency Lotus has unveiled its new solar-powered simulator building. The construction of the new state-of-the-art race facility adjacent to the main building at its Enstone base, which has been fully operational for the past few months and was revealed to the media this week, has been used as a platform to further reduce the team’s dependency on traditional energy sources, which has been ongoing since the Genii More…

Commercial partnerships and collaborations in F1 are commonplace, with most teams having “technology partners”, “performance partners”, “logistics partners and so on. Now the Lotus F1 team has gone one step further and found an “angry partner”; Rovio, the Finnish company behind the popular Angry Birds game. It’s a tongue in cheek story, but designed to draw attention to a couple of significant milestones for both companies. “While Lotus F1 Team will contest its 500th Grand Prix in Monaco, the No.1 digital game in the world – Angry Birds – has just reached 1 billion downloads. As a result, both brands More…

Group Lotus has moved to deny suggestions that it has ended its formal involvement in Formula 1, the sportscar firm revealing details of a “reshaped” arrangement with the Lotus F1 Team that has seen its owner Proton give the Enstone outfit a £30m loan. In an astonishingly strongly-worded statement issued by the British-based manufacturer this evening hitting back at what it claims have been “mistruths” concerning both its F1 involvement going forward and the wider situation at the company, Group Lotus sought to clarify its relationship with Lotus F1 and Genii Capital following Gerard Lopez’s comments at the end of More…

The Lotus F1 Team has tonight issued a statement clarifying the intention of a report from which quotes attributed to representatives of the team appeared in an official Bahrain Grand Prix press release earlier today, the Enstone team saying it had been meant for confidential use only. On a further day of frenetic reporting over the situation in the Gulf kingdom ahead of F1’s scheduled return next week, Sakhir organisers took the opportunity to go on the offensive in wake of the increasing stream of negative reports with race chairman Zayed Al Zayani claiming “scaremongering tactics” had created “huge misconceptions” over the More…

The use of the Lotus name in Formula 1 proved one of the most bitter and protracted sagas of recent times but a story that appeared to reach its resolution late last year has today taken a dramatic new turn with the revelation that the recently-rebranded Lotus F1 Team has cut all sponsorship ties with Group Lotus, little more than one season into a seven-year deal. Genii Capital co-owner Gerard Lopez, whose Luxembourg-based investment company owns the Enstone-based former Renault team outright, has told Autosport that the title sponsorship agreement that he signed with Group Lotus in late 2010 has More…

Lotus will return to the track at Barcelona on Thursday with its technical director James Allison confident that the chassis problems that forced it to pull out of last week’s test – which have now been confirmed as issues with the mounting of the upper front wishbone – have been fixed following an “intense” few days at its Enstone factory. After a promising start to pre-season when Romain Grosjean set the pace for 2012 cars at Jerez, the Frenchman reported the new second chassis as feeling strange on his first flying lap of the second test at the Circuit de More…

The team formerly known as Renault officially launched its new Lotus era today by unveiling its new car with the relatively low-key target of moving up one place to fourth in the constructors’ championship in 2012. The Genii Capital-owned outfit revealed the E20 – the ‘E’ in reference to Enstone, the team’s home of 20 years – on the internet but, rather than a live stream, released a novel pre-recorded broadcast from its factory which included the car’s unveil, interviews with drivers and management, along with behind-the-scenes footage. The black and gold-liveried challenger features the in-vogue stepped nose, but is More…

The ambitious Lotus F1 team has announced that it will use gearboxes and hydraulics from Red Bull Technology next season – which it will marry with a Renault engine. The engine deal is likely to be announced shortly. Effectively it will have a back end similar to the one which is competing for the championship this year and this will provide not only better performance but also better reliability. This year, in common with all the new teams, Lotus has been using Xtrac gearboxes and hydraulics and the hydraulics in particular have proven unreliable. Lotus and Cosworth announced their separation More…

The row over the use of the Lotus brand in F1 has been bubbling under the surface for a long time and today it went public. Proton, the owner of Group Lotus, which makes road cars said that the F1 team had no rights to use the name Lotus. This followed an announcement at the weekend that Tony Fernandes’s Lotus F1 team had acquired the rights to the Team Lotus name from David Hunt, who has owned it since 1994. From next season Tony Fernandes’ outfit will be called Team Lotus. He has made this move in order to bring More…

The Lotus Formula 1 team is making some bold moves forward as it nears the end of its first season in Formula 1. The team, established exactly one year ago by Tony Fernandes, the Malaysian music to airlines entrepreneur and F1 engineer Mike Gascoyne, will soon be renamed Team Lotus and this weekend it inked a deal with Renault for a technical collaboration involving two years supply of engines, gearboxes and KERS system. The technical deal is similar to the one Force India enjoys with McLaren Mercedes. For a small team to get the entire drive train from an established More…

When I was doing some behind the scenes filming at the Lotus factory in Norfolk, I came across a room which houses the chassis mock up, made of what looked like clay, which the team built over the winter prior to building their first car. This is also where the drivers have their seat fitting, making sure they actually fit in the cockpit. It was amazing to see perfect replicas of the Cosworth engine, the fuel tank, the oil tank and so on, which the engineers and mechanics spent hours on, like a giant Lego set to make sure the More…

When Rubens Barrichello threw his steering wheel out of the car in Monaco on Sunday, the electronics engineers and the accountants at Williams will have screamed. Those things are packed full of incredibly complex electronics and are expensive – over £40,000 a piece! If you want to know more, I’ve done a behind the scenes video on the secrets contained in an F1 steering wheel and now seems like the perfect time to show it. The drivers are very busy at the wheel nowadays during a Grand Prix. In addition to the clutch and gear change functions on the back More…

Lotus unveiled their new team, car and drivers in London this evening. It was a professional and understated presentation, the key themes were passion and heritage rather than promises and hype. Team boss Tony Fernandes is a builder of brands and here he has pulled together various strands into this team, leaning heavily on the heritage of the Lotus name. But the Chapman family who founded Lotus are fully behind him and were at the launch, also behind him are Mike Gascoyne and his experienced technical team made up of former Toyota, Super Aguri and Renault staff. There are 160 More…

The new Lotus F1 team has revealed the scale of its ambition by announcing that Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen, both race winners in F1, will drive for the team in its debut season next year. From the point of view of the drivers this is a big vote of confidence in technical director Mike Gascoyne, who worked with Trulli at Renault and Toyota. Lotus boss Tony Fernandes has empowered Gascoyne, given him the resources he asked for to get the job done and to have two highly experienced drivers, both of whom are capable of extracting the maximum performance More…

Tony Fernandes, the team Principal of the new Lotus F1 team will deliver the keynote address on the first day of the 2009 Motor Sport Business Forum in Monaco. All eyes will be on the Grimaldi Forum next Wednesday morning as Fernandes, talks about his new team, his innovative ideas for sponsorship and monetisation of the team and his ambitions within Formula One. I will be putting the questions to him. Send me a suggestion for a question and if I like it and think it’s appropriate, I’ll add it to the list. Fernandes has been a sponsor in F1 More…