Motorsport: Battle over Lotus name becomes surreal

The deal is done but the news hasn't been released by either party, it appears. Group Lotus, the wholly owned subsidiary of Malaysian car manufacturer Proton, is to buy out the 25% of Renault F1 team that is owned by .... Renault. But Renault will keep their name on the car. Whose logo will be on the nose-cone of the Lotus-Renault remains to be seen.

By making the investment and re-branding the Renault outfit, Group Lotus expect to immediately be ahead of the Team Lotus cars in 2011.Renault - which has many years F1 experience (it was, at one time, the Benetton team) finished 5th this year aided by the impossibility of overtaking in the last race of the season in Abu Dhabi; Lotus Racing finished 10th in its first season - a remarkable achievement.

But into that mix must go the fact that the bits that make the car go faster will be built by Red Bull and Renault for Team Lotus and by Renault for Lotus-Renault.

Group Lotus is making a serious foray into single-seat racing. As we reported earlier this year, Lotus branded a car entered in the Indycar series by KV Racing. At the time we questioned this saying that it was only a rebadging exercise because most of the Indycar racing machinery is to tight specifications and from specified manufacturers. But, we noted, KV Racing is the (not very well known) owner of Cosworth.

Yesterday, it was announced that KV Racing would enter "Lotus" cars in 2012 - and that under new rules Lotus was to be admitted as a supplier of aero kits and engines.

Wait.... Group Lotus do not have any experience in the design and running of big racing engines. Fabulous engineers that they are (and believe us, we have been fans of Lotus engineering including the cycle and jet-boat) for several decades and firmly remain so) what they don't do is build engines for e.g. F1 or Indycar. But Cosworth do. Cosworth has had a previous dalliance with big US open-wheel racing. KV Racing's owners bought Champ Car. Champ Car was far, far better racing than Indycar but Americans like to see cars going round in circles and so Champ Car, which ran on proper race tracks, collapsed and was absorbed into Indycar which, ironically, then began to run some of its races on proper tracks - which has led to a dominance of the series by foreign drivers who can turn right as well as left and know how to handle a car in the wet. The link between KV and Champ Car was that, as series owners, KV turned it into a one-engine-manufacturer series using, obviously, Cosworth engines. But the failure of Champcar left many American fans bereft: there is huge dissatisfaction amongst fans with the Indycar formula. Many blame (rightly or wrongly no longer matters) Cosworth for the failure.

KV carried its name into Indycar and although fans grunt, they also grudgingly accept the car. When one of the three cars in the team was rebranded Lotus in the middle of last season and former F1 driver Takuma Sato plonked in it, those fans started to come around. But whether they are yet ready to accept the name Cosworth back into the sport remains an unknown.

Not on Sato's performance: when a marathon runner hits the wall, it hurts and then the pain goes away; when Sato hits the wall, as he has been all too prone to do, it hurts and the pain just keeps on coming in the shape of pressure on the team to fix the car and huge bills hanging around like a bad smell.

Although Group Lotus is saying nothing, and KV aren't about to spill the beans, it is not a big leap to conclude that the engine being talked about may a Cosworth engine with a Lotus badge, albeit with Lotus' very special breath being poured into it. Indycar's press office say "Lotus Group CEO Dany Behar was not satisfied putting a Lotus sticker on an IZOD IndyCar Series car and not having a say in the car's design. So Behar and Lotus will take on Chevrolet and Honda in 2012 with an engine and aero kit designed in-house by the British car manufacturer."

Until the end of 2011, the existing situation will continue: that is Dallara chassis and Honda engines. In 2012, Chevrolet will return (rehabilitating the General Motors brand which has a high profile in tin-top racing in both NASCAR and WTCC.

There will be a standard chassis known as the IndyCar Safety Cell into which teams and drivers have some degree of design input. Again it will be built by Dallara Automobili at a new factory. But, unlike the existing car, it will be designed and sold as a rolling chassis (i.e. without engine, drivetrain or bodywork) so that teams will be able to design their own aero package.

That will need a wind tunnel. In a delicious irony, the nearest wind tunnel for single wheel racing aero design to their factory will be the new one being built just down the road by Team Lotus. Will they become sufficiently friendly to agree to use it?

Hm... just one point about that heritage thing: Colin Chapman said that Lotus would never again race at le Mans after the team was disqualified after the race for having different diameter front and rear wheels. Chapman was adamant that the stewards re-defined the rules at post-race scrutineering so as to defeat the Lotus success.

For Team Lotus, the fact that Group Lotus is running in the USA in traditional Lotus colours of green and yellow has caused a rethink for the 2011 F1 season. Team Lotus (which is, at least for the next few weeks, officially called Lotus Racing, a name that Group is demanding back as from the end of December) has put a brave face on it and said that their cars will run in the iconic black and gold livery. Emotive yes, for ever linked with Lotus glory days - undoubtedly, but in truth not Lotus colours: they were the colours of a tobacco sponsor.

But Claudio Berro, Director of Motorsport for Group Lotus needs a history lesson: "As you would expect from the company that pioneered aerodynamics in sports car and F1 racing over the years our aero body kit will also be a world class solution." Actually, Mr Berro, formerly of lots of different car companies including Ferrari, that was Team Lotus, not Lotus Cars or Lotus engineering. Oops.

It's not the only strange thing said by Berro recently: in mid October, he was quoted in Italian website 422race.com as saying that Group Lotus did not intend to go into F1: "This is not our decision at the moment because Formula 1 has enormous costs. I think that, if Lotus is to go into Formula 1, they have to do it at the top and competing with the best teams, unlike this year," he added, some may think gratuitously spitefully - but with a clear hint that it would not start a new team.

And there is more confusion to come: Jimmy Vasser told Speed.Com that "The Lotus component will grow each year—it’s very incentive-based—and it also includes a lot of additional technical support which will help us with a lot of performance-based stuff that will have a big impact next year. But it isn’t a huge dollar deal." He also hinted that Lotus would sponsor all three KV cars next year. Unlike F1, teams do not share livery across all their cars and individual cars and drivers collect sponsorship. So a matching trio of cars would be unusual. But the liveries will also cause some confusion with Team Lotus, it appears. In the same interview, Vasser said " You’ll see some historic liveries next year; John Player Special colors, the Camel Lotus yellow, the British Racing Green and some other cool stuff. The fans really connected to the car’s colors this year."

Perhaps, but also perhaps not, at least not in the form he says: JPS and Camel were liveries for cigarette companies: tobacco advertising is not allowed in US (or most other) motor racing. Indeed, as from 22 June 2010, tobacco and smokeless tobacco / substitute sponsorship was banned in all forms of US sports by the Food and Drugs Administration. Those liveries were almost certainly owned by either Team Lotus or the sponsors, so there is the potential for another battle over branding.

But if this was a coin, it would have too many sides to be of any use. There are rumours, started at the Paris Motor Show recently, that there are plans for some form of tie-up between Renault-Nissan and Proton. Group Lotus put on an incredible display of pre-production (not concept) cars that it says it will release over the next four years. And yes, they are - in every sense of the word - real Lotus cars. Except that some of them will have big engines, a departure from tradition. But the cars will also make useful platforms for the entries into the various sports car categories Group Lotus intends to enter.

It's all part of a larger strategy: Lotus aims to multiple five-fold its car sales. And it intends to focus on new markets - it is closing many of its UK dealerships. But also Proton is in need of some development help. It's important not to under-estimate the success of Proton in recent years. It has launched a raft of new models and turned itself from being a screwdriver plant for end-of-life models from e.g. Mitsubishi to a fully-fledged -and generally profitable - manufacturer of cars that are genuinely far better than their reputation. True, much of the credit for that goes to Lotus Engineering but that's what subsidiaries are for.

But the new model Proton is a locally built, rebadged (with small changes) Mitsubishi Lancer leading some to question the Malaysian manufacturer's ability to compete. That's unfair: it's the current model Lancer and if Proton is to be criticised then where does that leave Toyota, Peugeot Citroen and even Aston Martin all sharing a common car built around the world. Frankly, it's a peurile argument from people who want to knock a company that is doing a good job. But since its ancient Perdana model (Camry rival) came to the end of production, Proton has not had a large car. Actually, that's probably a good thing except for the small matter of national pride. New rules will soon allow foreign manufacturers to sell large cars in Malaysia with less of a tax-hit. As it stands, there is no locally produced / branded car for government use. And the Malaysian government takes great pride in having fleets of local cars to carry both ministers and official visitors around. As the fleet ages, the only option is to buy a foreign car.

Therefore there is speculation that the Renault F1 deal is part of a bigger picture and that there is some plan for Renault-Nissan to become involved in Proton in some capacity. Proton has often, in recent years, been courted by GM and Volkswagen but the talks always fall down. But a manufacturing plant for large Renault or Nissan passenger cars would make sense for Renault-Nissan by giving it access to the protected ASEAN market. And provided the cars were not sold in Malaysia with rival branding, that could work out quite nicely.

A silly idea? No. Nissan already have such a deal with Samsung in Korea. Yes, that Samsung. There are design changes and locally produced content but underneath the car is a Nissan, built in a Samsung factory.

And there is yet another dimension: Proton hopes that its EMAS project will prove very popular in Europe. If it had a Renault or Nissan badge on the front, or was a JV with that company or was build in one of their plants, then that dream stands a much greater chance of being realised.

That's the thing about motorsport: it's all wheels within wheels.

It's just that, in comparison to other areas, those wheels go round very, very fast.

And sometimes they come off.