Lotus F1 became the third team to unveil their 2015 challenger by releasing images of the new Mercedes-powered E23 Hybrid via social media.

The Enstone-based outfit are hoping that this new car will a be more competitive following a disappointing 2014 championship. A switch to a new engine manufacturer is certainly a positive step.

In addition, Lotus has spend much of last season consolidating its finances and restructuring its technical organisation so as to ensure that it returned to form this year.

The E23 Hybrid looks very beautiful, especially the front nose. This is a major contrast to that ugly and now-outlawed twin-tusk concept in 2014.

Lotus technical director Nick Chester described the car, which will be powered by Mercedes’ V6 hybrid turbo, as “a massive step forward”.

“It’s no secret that we struggled with last year’s car so we’ve targeted every area that caused us an issue,” he said. “We’ve made strong progress in the wind tunnel as well as in areas such as packaging and cooling.”

“We expect the E23 to perform far, far better than its predecessor.”

Chester said the new power unit “looks to be the one area of the car which could bring us the greatest performance gain”.

“It’s not just performance, but reliability and driveability as well as packaging and cooling too,” he explained.

Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado have been retained for another season while the first shakedown of the new car will take place at Jerez, as part of pre-season testing.

Fingers crossed the E23 goes as quicly as it looks at the race tracks this season.