The new Lotus team releases the first images of a scale model of the car it will use for its entry to F1 competition
Barely a month after the announcement that it had secured an entry for the 2010 F1 season, the new Lotus F1 team has released imagery of what its new machine will look like.
The team has completed work on a scale model of its first F1 car, which will now head into the windtunnel as the team begins to prepare for its entry into the sport.
The model, which has yet to be named, will be the first step on the road to the 2010 season opener in Bahrain, although chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne admitted there was still plenty to do before the car is in a position to hit the track.
"The start of any windtunnel testing is an important step in the development of a new Formula 1 car, but it is particularly exciting for us as we continue preparations for our first season," he said. "It has been a very busy time since our entry was confirmed by the FIA. We had been working on the entry for several months so we already had aspects of the team infrastructure in place; the finances, the factory and the top management.
"Once our entry was confirmed in mid-September, we were able to accelerate our recruitment and car development process and this is really where we are at now. There is no escaping the challenges that we face simply to get the car ready for the first race of next season, but I am confident that we are up to the task in hand.
“Our target is to get the car ready for a roll out by the middle of February so that we can carry out preseason testing in preparation for Bahrain in mid-March."
Gascoyne added that the team needs to remain realistic about its chances for 2010, with the focus being to get ahead of the other newcomers and then progress as the year goes on.
“We need to remain realistic in our aims for the first year,” he said. “We are a new team and we are starting our development late, so it will be an achievement just to get two cars on the Bahrain grid. I hope by the middle of the season we will have established ourselves as the best of the rookie teams and then continue to make forward progress for the rest of the year.”
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