As I'm sure you're aware by now, this forthcoming F1 season will most probably have two separate Lotus-branded teams on the grid. One will be Team Lotus, with Renault engines, (Lotus Racing from last season), and the other, somewhat confusingly, will be Lotus Renault (nee Renault).
The Lotus naming row has been one of the the most persistent F1 stories of the off-season, and demonstrates F1's ability to shoot itself in the foot, just when you were thinking that the sport was getting to be refreshingly free of embarrassing internal politics, and gratuitously confusing its customers. Up until now I'd been keen to ignore the case, hoping against hope that it would go away by itself. Neither side seems to want to blink though, and the latest leg of this is a summary judgment into the rights surrounding the use of the Team Lotus name due to be heard in the High Court on Monday. I'm not a lawyer, but the smart money is on the stand-off rumbling on beyond that.
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| Lotus Racing from 2010, now Team Lotus |
The reason this situation has come about is not straightforward, and I'll do my best not to detain (or bore) us with the details. Historically Team Lotus (the F1 team) and Group Lotus (who built the road cars) are separate entities, and have been ever since Colin Chapman (Lotus godfather) decided to split the two in 1958. When Team Lotus (that's the F1 team, do keep up) went belly-up at the end of 1994, it was acquired by a gentleman called David Hunt (James Hunt's brother, if you're interested). After Chapman's death in 1982 Group Lotus had several owners, before Proton bought them in 1996. Last year, the Lotus Racing F1 team used the Lotus name under licence from Group Lotus.
