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Formula 1 Lotus

Lotus Racing looking for a new name?

2010 Singapore GP

The Lotus position seems to have worsened for the Lotus Racing F1 team with an Autosport article claiming Proton-owned Group Lotus is now unwilling to work with 1 Malaysia Racing Team, otherwise known as Lotus Racing.

Technical boss Mike Gascoyne is perplexed at the stance from Group Lotus, “We don’t really understand why Group Lotus don’t want to support us in doing that job for them. We’ve brought great value to the brand and the shareholders invested something like £80 million into the brand and the development of the team, and we’re a little bit failing to understand why Group Lotus seem to want to try to kick us out.”

Group Lotus wants to cast its motorsport arm wider than F1, something which Gascoyne can’t understand, “Because they seem to want to do every racing series that there is, and for a loss-making car company, that seems to be slightly perplexing. But if that’s what they want to do, good luck to them.”

Unless some very big hatchets are buried soon the future of Lotus Racing as we know it looks increasingly likely to be operating under a different name. With a new Renault engine deal and gearboxes supplied by Red Bull Tony Fernandes and his merry men are keen to get ready fir the 2011 season. Gascoyne added, “We’ll be firing the car up on 25 January in readiness for the first test in February.”

[Source: Autosport]

4 replies on “Lotus Racing looking for a new name?”

There was this … “politician”, lets say, in the 20th century, who almost got away with some really rubbish concepts and sickening ideals and some territorial expansion, conquering a handful of neighboring nations and going big on the genocide front. But he pushed his luck way beyond anything anyone could have imagined before it all happened. And he lost out in the end, the whole world sighing with relief afterwards. It sends shivers down my spine that he *could* have got away with it all if he’d been a tad more modest and sort of stopped the territorial expansion process halfway through.

I know that’s a really far-fetched connotion, but watching Group Lotus going for war on that many fronts really makes me think they’ve lost their senses. This whole strategy of taking on almost every global top roadracing series at the same time as taking on the biggest, most established sportscar makers *only* makes sense if Proton is planning to sell the whole bloody Lotus lot quite soon to some numbercrunching idiots from a venture capitalist company who are willing to believe in all this hot air. “Pimping the bride” is a loose translation of an expression for that in my native language 🙂

Yes, there could be some merit in your theory about selling off Lotus to the highest bidder.

There is something unnerving about all this, that’s for sure.

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