SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

Team Lotus announced

The FIA has announced that a 13th slot has been awarded to the Malaysian-backed Lotus F1 Team. The BMW entry remains undecided, which means that Lotus will have to build its cars in England.

The FIA has awarded the 13th entry in the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship to the Lotus F1 Team. The federation says that it also received an impressive application from the BMW Sauber team and will give it a notional 14th slot if a vacancy comes up. The FIA says that it would like to see 14 teams and wants the teams to agree to the appropriate rule changes and commercial compromises to ensure that this happens. The team will be known as Lotus F1 Team and its team principal will be Tony Fernandes of AirAsia. The company behind the team is a partnership between the Malaysian Government and a consortium of Malaysian entrepreneurs. The team will initially be based at the RTN facility in Norfolk. RTN was built by Toyota for its initial Formula One programme and then used by Bentley for its successful Le Mans programme.

The team's future design, R&D, manufacturing and technical centre will be purpose built at Malaysia's Sepang International Circuit.

The team's technical director will be Mike Gascoyne. The team has agreed an engine supply deal with Cosworth and a wide variety of technical partnerships including Xtrac and FondTech.