FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Lotus launches E20

Today Lotus revealed their 2012 F1 chassis, the E20, at there Enstone factory.

Today Lotus revealed their 2012 F1 chassis, the E20, at there Enstone factory.

The team made the presentation in an online broadcast, and will being running it at winter testing on Tuesday from Jerez, Spain. The car features a stepped nose design and a traditional exhaust layout.

Technical Director James Allison said, "depending on where you look, some parts of the new car are a ground-up redesign and in other areas we have further optimised the best bits of the design philosophy we've adopted for several seasons. As far as the exhausts are concerned, our forward exhausts would now be illegal under the new rules and didn't live up to our expectations in any case. So that part of the car we say goodbye to and welcome in a complete re-design. The front and rear suspension layouts are substantially revised to try and give us better aerodynamic opportunities. The front wing is a continuation of the concepts we have worked on since the 2009 rules were published. With the rear wing system, we've continued to try to work on having a satisfactory level of rear downforce stability, whilst also having a maximum DRS switching potential."

"The 60% wind tunnel has allowed us to expand dramatically the realism of the tests that we perform in our wind tunnel, so we get the car to more realistic steer and yaw values. Those are pretty fundamental things. That hopefully means that the car will be more tolerant of a wider range of cornering conditions."

"We've worked hard and long on the car. We have tried to react to the regulatory picture as it's unfolded, but we will only really start to be able to judge how well we have done once we start to run the car in pre-season. Even then we won't really know until qualifying in Melbourne."

Team principal Eric Boullier said, "We have clear ambitions. We have a target. We want to be a top team and seen as a top team and everyone is united behind that goal. We have a strong driver line-up. With J©rme we have a third driver who is young and ambitious and contested all the races in 2011. With Romain it was clear how much he deserved the race drive after just two practice sessions where he matched the pace of our race drivers and gave the engineers clear and concise feedback."

"With Kimi we have a driver who has won races and won the World Championship. He's worked for McLaren and for Ferrari. We went testing with him in a two year-old car on demonstration tyres and from the first lap he was on it. We can't wait for the season to begin."

Team Chairman Gerard Lopez said, "The launch of the E20 today is another step for us towards our goal of winning World Championships; to follow the precedent set by Benetton and Renault. The E20 is the first car to have been designed using our 60% scale wind tunnel and our upgraded CFD facility. We have new drivers; a world champion with Kimi and a tremendous talent for the future with Romain. There are a lot of positives about our team in 2012."

"Last season was tough for us, there's no secret of that, but we showed good potential, especially early in the year. In 2012 we want to finish in fourth position or higher in the championship. Beyond that our aspirations are higher. Benetton won world championships in 1994-5. Renault won titles in 2005-6. We want to continue that cycle."