F1: Lotus naming confusion increases further

The official listing for the teams shows that the entrants for today's Melbourne Race were Lotus Renault and Renault.

The team that calls itself Team Lotus is the one that the FIA calls Lotus Renault.

The team that calls itself Lotus Renault is the one the FIA calls Renault.

Confused?

Absolutely. And the cars don't help much, either: the rear wing of the Renault has LOTUS written on it in big letters: that's to be expected because the Renault is sponsored by Lotus so it's no different to any other team putting the name of their main sponsor there.

Team Lotus, however, have NAZA, a Malaysian car dealer and automotive screwdriver-plant operator (builds Kia and Peugeot models).

Still confused?

The black and gold ones are Renault. The green and yellow ones are Team Lotus.

So, before anyone else moans at us about how we describe the teams, we'll spell it out.

We describe teams by the constructor, not by sponsor and not by any long-winded combination of sponsor, engine supplier and constructor.

So, we call Ferrari Ferrari, McLaren Mclaren, Mercedes Mercedes and so on.

Therefore, in these pages, Lotus or Team Lotus are constructors, as is Renault. Group Lotus is merely a sponsor (and, according to some but not all reports including those emanating from Group Lotus, part owner) of the Renault team and therefore does not fit into the way we describe teams.