Th Lotus F1 Team, formerly called Lotus Renault GP, has announced that its 2012 challenger will be named E20, a departure from the R tagged chassis names of the Renault team. Officially, the E20 name is to commemorate the 20th F1 chassis designed at the team’s base in Enstone, the team’s HQ since 1992. To be driven by Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean for 2012, the E20 will be unveiled on 5 February on the team’s website.
“Our naming of the chassis to recognise Enstone’s importance to the team’s evolution highlights our recognition of the contribution of the facility and the personnel who work tirelessly every year to produce the very best car possible. We certainly hope that this is the case with the E20 and we are looking forward to revealing the car to the world and seeing it out on track for the first time,” said team boss Eric Boullier.
“There are a number of technical changes from last year and we have an exciting new driver line-up to extract the maximum from the E20 through the twenty Grands Prix of the 2012 season, including the 500th race for this team through its different incarnations. We hope that the E20 proves to be a performing Enstone design,” the Frenchman added.
Meanwhile, returning world champ Kimi Raikkonen is feeling positive after a two-day test at Valencia last week. It was quite a session for the Finn, as he returned to an F1 car’s cockpit for the first time in over two years.
“It went well today and overall the two days have been helped me a lot. Even though I was using a two year-old car and the Pirelli demo tyres, I learnt about working with the team and the engineers which means I can focus on the new car once we get to Jerez for the first official test. It was great to be driving an F1 car again and from that respect I feel very positive,” he said.
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Why the name start with ‘E’??
Real Lotus chasis always start with T!
Why not T129? This Lotus F1 team is the FAKE one!
Lotus F1 team is not the legendary Team Lotus brand. The team is fully owned by Genii Capital. This is 1st time Group Lotus name in F1 participation. Lotus name was used in this team like franchise business selling Brand name.
Real Lotus died in 1995.
Lotus, please provide a fast car for Kimi. Can’t wait to see him flying on track.
This is what obsessed engineers do to relief their FI fever, it also shows that good engineering is not just about numbers, it needs to be creative too.
Cooool, wonder if they can actually make their F1 car sounds ‘Cliff of Dover’ ? or maybe Tony’s team can since he was in music before.
LOL ! Nice 1 !