Well put.

Since when does the FIA keep statistics?

Team Lotus is still owned by David Hunt. The Lotus name comes from Lotus Cars which is a different organisation.

Sorry, I assumed they'd deal with matters such as this. Maybe a silly assumption?! If not, who does keep/sort out official statistic??

reminds me of that old gag about the streetsweeper boasting about having used the same brush for 20years. and in that time he only had to change the head 6 times and fit 3 new poles. it's like those old Motown acts that still tour with none of the original members. the ancient greek philosophers spent all their time trying to work out the essence of such things.

Mercedes is surely really a Brawn/Honda/BAR/Tyrell rather than any kind of Silver Arrow, but that's OK, they just need to keep going long enough, they'll soone enough become the "real thing". At what point does the elastic snap, from Bruce McLaren to Teddy Mayer to Ron Dennis, what else would need to change before you said it wasn't a McLaren anymore. How many people that currently work on the Ferraris even met Enzo.

I dunno, the way I see it if a team of people spend money, do the work, is lucky enough to get some points, then they are free to do whatever they want with those points, they are theirs. and if Fernandes wants to fling them on the old Lotus pile, that's fair enough.

in software it's called duck-typing, if it swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it's a duck ... same thing for a Lotus F1 car i think.

Exactly.

What if it's a diver? Or a phalarope? Or a grebe?

It's not a Lotus, it's a "Lotus".

According the the official FIA F1 website, all Renault victories are counted together. So far, they aren't counting Mercedes or Lotus' results with older incarnations of the teams.

Renault
Mercedes
Lotus

I don't see a problem with the Proton badge being there as they are the parent company of Lotus. Ferrari had the same thing for many years with the Fiat logos on the engine cover and nose.

Because while it is the Lotus team, it has no association with Lotus Cars.

According to Fernandes, Lotus Cars is associated through an investment into Lotus Racing via Proton.

Tony Fernandes Interview

Well, maybe Lotus Cars don't want their name appearing on the car. After all, they raised hell over it when the idea was floated.

in the recent past I have posted a fairly scathing opinion on the new Lotus team.
They are not the Lotus of old and never will be, having seen the new livery I am tempted to say I am impressed with their choice of colour scheme...
I hereby rescind my previous opinions and wish them well in their future endeavours even though I am not entirely iompressed with their driver lineup.

When the idea first came up, I'm sure they didn't want their name sullied by shoddy Lotus F1 team. But now, it makes more sense to have the Proton branding rather than more Lotus branding. Most laypeople will readily associate the team with the car company anyway. Giving Proton a little exposure is just bonus.

Not really. Lotus Group is linked only via brand association and the fact that Proton owns the group. The 'investment' should be more appropriately called 'spend' because Proton has allocated a budget directly to them and so that's what the Proton logo on the car represents. It's a direct spend.

Do you mean that Proton has essentially provided sponsorship funding to the team?


Honestly, I shouldn't have used the word investment. However, Fernandes was (perhaps intentionally) vague about Proton's relationship with the team.

I'll point you to a previous post I made.

Both Lotus F1 Racing and Lotus Cars are working together.

That was my thought as well: there's no official link between Team Lotus and the new Lotus F1 Racing, but the name is taken from the Lotus Cars and/or Lotus Group companies, to which the F1 team is linked through Proton.

Livery looks pretty good but the chassis reminds me of this.



Are Lotus fans just retirement home residents reminscing for "yester year" when teams like Lotus were racing? Or just British racing fans who like the colour green?

The car doesn't look very good which you would expect as they are a new team. More teams in F1 the better though. As long as it's not Monaco qualifying! Traffic is going to be ridiculous.

PS. If Redbull leave F1 and a cheap immitation team comes into F1 20 years later, I won't be cheering for them. Someone tried to steal Brabham's name as well but luckily they weren't let in.

Eh... doesn't Lotus arguably have the best line-up of the new teams? Trulli (race-winner), and Kovalinen (race-winner)?

Yes.

And from the Autosport interview:

I don't think Lotus will set any tracks on fire, but I'm fairly surprised of the level of professionalism that surrounds the team - the new car and its color scheme is a far cry from the atrocious 1Malaysia schemes that saw the rounds of Internet when Fernandez took reins. I think Fernandez is proving more level-headed than I first thought and has no crazy ideas in terms of this all "Malaysian"-effort and nationalist jingoism (that will probably eventually sink USF1). The close contacts to Fondmetal and Aerolabs is also a big asset for the team, as is of course Gascoyne's long history in F1.

The best news for the team in my books is that there is a quiet but stern retraction of the idea of locating key facilities to Asia, this signals a different attitude than when the hunt for sponsors was on, as Fernandez states in Autosport's interview:

"I think for the moment we are going to keep our base in Hingham. I think the idea of trying to do two bases just complicates it more, so for the foreseeable future let's give the team the best ability to perform."

Any hi-res pictures circling arround? Especially those from presentation, those released by Lotus with car on white background (f1fanatic got only the medium size ones). Sure would like to have them for desktop background, the car looks just... stunning.

If you listen to Gareth Jones on Speed featuring Sniff Petrol, they recently referred to the new "Lotus" team hoovering up Team Lotus memorabilia to give them some history. That sounds a little bit like what you do if you are setting up a Genuine Oirish Pub in Tokyo. It is a little bit faux.

Colour scheme still looks great. Much better than the mess that the Team Lotus car had in its last season. Were they not sponsored by Loctite of all things?

Gurneyflap sir, bottom of the page

British racing green is really Irish

Bejaysus, not that myth again.

(The traditional Irish colour at the time was blue, incidentally...)

Yes, I caught that too. I had kinda hoped that Fernandes was playing up the nationalism-theme to satisfy some of his backers, but his true intentions were to make the team as professional as possible.

Heikki busy earning money:

http://img.mtv3.fi/mn_kuvat/mtv3/viihde/55...0/02/884286.jpg

http://img.mtv3.fi/mn_kuvat/mtv3/viihde/55...0/02/884167.jpg

Wondered why Tony Fernandes has been constantly Twittering on the Brit Awards all evening till I remembered his background is in the music industry. He seems to belong to the brash Eddie Jordan/ Flav school of team boss instead of the serious Ron Dennis/ Jean Todt mould. That's not criticism or praise btw just an observation.

I didn't know TF was/is in music even though I've joined his Twiter.
I rather like the look of the car, yellow wheels of the 25, nice touch! I don't think they will set the track alight at first but Mr Mike G has a decent track record, who knows, The motor press claim he doesn't stay long in a job and has had a quite a few, lets see!

Hee-hee.. gotta love the marks in snow IN FRONT of Heikki running from a hoprse for his life in tank top on the snow (WTF?) in the first picture. Wonder how many times he had to run through there..

Indeed I love the nice little touch of having yellow wheels.

TF started in music but moved into Airlines similar to Richard Branson. This is the wikipedia description:

'He subsequently became the South East Asian regional vice-president for Warner Music Group from 1992-2001. When Time Warner Inc announced its merger with America Online Inc., Fernandes left to pursue his dream of starting a budget no-frills airline.'

You know what I want to see? Just to see what would happen? And obviously this isn't going to happen for a long long time but just imagine this...

This Lotus team winning at Silverstone. Standing on the podium. And then the Malaysian anthem plays. I wonder how people will react to it? Reading some press releases from this team they sure do go out of their way to mention how Malaysian this team is. Makes me wonder if they should have just went with '1Malaysia Proton F1' instead of Lotus F1.

I seriously doubt anyone will care what anthem is played.

I hope they do. They are a Malaysian company. It doesn't mean the British can't support the team anymore. Budweiser is owned by InBev, a Belgian company. People here in the US are still happily consuming this "Great American lager."

I've always hoped to someday see the Lotus name return to F1. This Malaysian consortium, which has license and backing from Lotus Cars via its parent company Proton (a Malaysian company) to operate under the Lotus brand, has brought the name back.

Team Lotus is dead. This new Lotus team has legitimate connections to the Lotus marque, has explicit approval from Colin Chapman's son, Clive, and has been very careful to honor Lotus' heritage. If Lotus is ever coming back, this is as good as it gets.

The same thing happens in Australian motorsport: Holden fans are proud to be "Australian" when Ford is American, but they ignore the fact that Holden is owned by GM.

This is a bit OT but there is a funny video in MTV3 web site of Heikki preparing for Bahrain named "Frost ends in Bahrain". It is in Finnish, but I think you get the idea

http://www.mtv3.fi/urheilu/f1/uutiset.shtm...2010/02/1058435

Press the Katso button

I know Lotus F1 has nothing to do with past Team Lotus but I wonder how much 'association' will be placed on the 'new Lotus F1' if they start winning, or indeed how much distance placed if they fail?


Season points or no points, for me it's great to see the name on the grid again!

Excellent

I'm hoping Kovy will be rebuilding his reputation now. I think he will.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idtAvNkaMBQ

Great video of the factory and car coming together!

Like, a car smashing into the factory in an failed evasive move?

Actually, here's the channel link: http://www.youtube.com/user/mylotusracing#p/u

6 great vids. Man, watching them... the people behind the car, the atmosphere at the factory, the freaking Simpsons pinball machine, it's kind of hard not to be enamored by it all. Really hope their car does the job.

interesting piece on the rear wing

Nothing new....

Fernandes is tweeting that Fauzy is driving without powersteering?! Can you drive an F1 car without power steering?

No, i can't

The Sauber's in 2004 (and maybe more?) ran without power steering for the first few grands prix.

I wouldn't have thought it was that much more difficult.

Well that Lotus certainly looks the business.

Far more aerodynamically developed than the Virgin I reckon.