Since he parted company with HRT a few weeks ago, Colin Kolles has been busy preparing alternative plans for the 2012 season, although he is still entirely possible that he will pop up somewhere in F1 in the course of the next season.
Kolles’s Kodewa has just been named as Lotus’s team in the LMP2 championship, running a Lotus-engined Lola coupe.
The car will run in the Lotus black and gold livery, although the design has been done by Daniel Simon, who liveried the HRT last year.
“This is a very exciting step for us, we made no secret of our intention to tackle LMP2 this year but it had to be done in the right way and we’re very happy with the set up with our partners,” said Group Lotus Director of Motorsport Claudio Berro. “More than anything else, we’re looking forward to our return to Le Mans in this capacity after our success with the Evora last year. The engine development is going well but there’s a lot to do over the coming weeks to ensure that the car is prepared for the intensive testing that we must undertake to ensure we’re ready to complete.”
Further details regarding drivers will be confirmed shortly.
Not my favourite pairing (new new Lotus and Kolles) but by heck that looks nice.
Wow! Good Job Kolles, good Luck Lotus and another stunning Livery! Lets hope Simon got a shot at updating the Lotus F1 livery as well!
Now that is a pretty car. F1 needs to start making some rulesets to promote beauty in it’s design – this years platypus nose is just an uglyfest.
Not that I’m shallow or anything… Ha ha.
a bit desperate with the Union Jack ey? ‘I swear we are British… sh… don’t look at Malaysia… or the Turkish guy running it… or the Romanian guy running the lmp2 op…. we are British.. pleeeeeease!’
Just out of interest, do you know if Lotus is stilling flogging Evora’s with Toyota engines?
Seems fishy a deal was done for the road car engines and now with Toyota joinging LMP1, could Lotus have scored a scaled down, partially developed block that they could turn into an LMP2 engine?
Any word on the spec of the engine?
Must admit, didn’t really see this coming this much.
I believe they are still using Toyota engines, in the new Exige as well iirc
Lotus Group / Danny Bahar weren’t kidding when they stated they wanted to bring back the Lotus name back to racing. If I’m not mistaken with this they have a car with the Lotus name in every major single seater and sports car series in the world (maybe not SuperGT series but then again what constitutes as ‘major’?).
Although I like the livery it stings me that they used a Lola chassis, a Lotus has to be something unique and designed by Lotus (but I understand that doing that means that they would need the budget of a small country in order to finance that).
You hit the nail on the head Robin.
Lotus don’t actually have any cars in any series. As a means of getting the name out there they seem to be doing a good job, but I wonder what value they get from it when anybody looking closer sees that this is actually a Lola (granted with a lotus engine), the F1 is a Renault with a (I assume soon to be) Renault engine, and the Champ car is I guess a Dallara or something, again without a Lotus engine.
Not exactly a shop window for Lotus ability to actually do anything apart from throw maney around.
Having said that you’ve got to wish them well because their plans and proposed cars look (maybe too) fantastic.
All reeks to me of MBA 101, whereas in real life I’ve always forund ‘under-promise, over-deliver’ works better. Not much of that at Lotus to date though
The IRL ‘Lotus’ engine is a Lotus badged Judd engine and for the new rules all chassis will be Dallaras with only the ‘aero’ package (i.e. the bits you can actually see from the outside) being made/used by the teams. You want cheaper racing? Maybe this is one way to do it …
In what way is the F1 car a Renault? Renault haven’t had anything to do with the team since 2010.
“….we’re looking forward to our return to Le Mans in this capacity after our success with the Evora last year.”
Who are they kidding – they were seventh in the GTE class, 19 laps down on the class winner.
marketing 101, see.
Go to Le Mans and see what it takes just to get a car across the line. You might then feeling like re-assessing your ‘sofa derived’ success criteria.
I have – running teams at Le Mans24, Spa 24, Nurburgring 24 plus involvement in Daytona and Bathurst. This isn’t a view that is ‘sofa derived.’.
So…An F1 team, an Indycar engine + aero-package and now a LMP2 team and several new models….
and when was the last time the company made a profit? How long can they keep their head above water?
Looks pretty slick, I like it
Group Lotus still have money to burn then….
Um, “after our success with the Evora” – that’s a pretty low bar!
The Evora needs to make a series of giant steps to become success – mostly on the engine side! Hopefully their LMP2 will be much more competitive.
That Lotus would look better if someone hadn’t decided to make the Union flag all “billowy” on the rear-wing end-plate.
Speaking of “British” car unveiling, McLaren launch is tomorrow apparently. Bets on Mike Gascoigne being right about many teams going with ugly noses?
Ill tell you when I get there…
If McLaren’s webservers are a sign of their form for the season, the boys from Woking will be painfully slow and crash a lot.
Nice question Joe.
And: Thank McLaren went with a nose which simply drops sharply rather than the Caterham concept. Looks much prettier.
They’re spending an awful lot of money…
I heard that there will soon be a Lotus sponsored bowling team
The livery looks really nice. Wonder if he will have a go at the F1 car this year, last year’s black and gold design just didn’t look as good as it should have done.
Anyone following the UK rallycross series will probably have been as surprised as me to see a Lotus Evora V6 IPS running in that also – not exactly what you would think of as first choice for mud and tarmac (if you don’t believe me, Google it!). It does go surprisingly well though!
This isn’t a Lotus engine – it’s a BMW engine, adapted for LMP2 racing by Judd, and now Lotus paid to have their name written on it. I wish they’d spend the money on developing the Evora GTE, at least that car actually has something to do with Lotus…
Really? I wonder what John Judd was working on all thee months. Last time I saw him he was very excited about his new engine.
Maybe that’s the twin turbo V6 Indycar engine he’s developed for Lotus?