This is the brand new and more aggressive looking T128 from Team Lotus. The outfit has pinned hopes that this 2011 racer will make them midfield contenders and bring them their first world championship points.
Even though the T128 will not appear in public until later this week, when it joins the second day of the Valencia test, Team Lotus have chosen to reveal images of the new car in a special edition of its Team Lotus Notes online magazine.
The outfit had always admitted that last year’s T127 was a deliberately conservative machine built simply to get the team onto the grid in a very limited timescale, rather than with outright performance in mind.
It halted development on the 2010 car early in the season to focus on the 2011 design, which is more in line with modern Formula One practice, and features Renault V8 power and transmission systems from Red Bull Racing.
These images released so far suggest the T128 features a more intricate front wing design, sharply sculpted sidepods, as well as a more conventional higher nose plus an airbox/roll hoop reminiscent of the 2010 Mercedes – suggesting Lotus has found a way around the rules that appeared to have outlawed such ‘blade’ designs.
The team’s chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne is confident that Team Lotus has achieved everything it wanted to with the T128.
“I think that basically this car looks like a frontrunning car in every area,” he said. “We said very clearly that we want to start challenging the established teams and I think that’s very achievable.”
The dispute regarding the Lotus naming rights continues despite the new car launch and yet, Tony Fernandes’ outfit had chosen to continue with the traditional Lotus type numbering system by choosing T128 for its car, rather than the TL11 title that was initially announced.
Fernandes said it was a relief to be able to focus on the new car after a winter of legal disputes with Renault’s new title sponsor Group Lotus.
“There has been so much has focus off-track it’s a thrill to be able to get back to talking about racing,” Fernandes admitted.
“The launch of the T128 is a big step forward for Team Lotus and I want to thank the whole team for the amount of hard work that has already gone into T128, and I want to thank Renault and Red Bull Technology for their tremendous support in helping us make this step forward and for being such great team partners.”
The team’s driver line-up remains unchanged for 2011, with Finland’s Heikki Kovalainen and Italy’s Jarno Trulli at the wheel.
Team Lotus principal Tony Fernandes hopes that the new T128 can start a new legend for the season ahead. Autosport.com has the details.
Tony Fernandes hopes his Lotus team’s second Formula 1 car will be the start of a new ‘legend’ that does justice to the legacy of Colin Chapman’s original Lotus operation.
Fernandes’ squad remains locked in battle with Renault backer Group Lotus over the right to use the Lotus title in Formula 1, and with no quick resolution achieved in court last week, the season will now start with two teams carrying Lotus Renault branding.
Team Lotus launched its 2011 T128 F1 design in its Team Lotus Notes online magazine this morning, and in his introduction, Fernandes said while Chapman is still his inspiration, he hoped his team could now start developing a heritage of its own.
“Colin Chapman created the last dynasty and it’s one that inspires me and all my team to do more, think more, be more every day,” Fernandes wrote. “But now it is time for us to create our own legend.”
Although Lotus initially indicated that it would use the TL11 designation for its new car, it instead chose to continue using the naming pattern associated with the original Lotus team and unveiled the car as the T128 instead.
Writing on Twitter earlier today, Fernandes said: “Why the change of name? Because we are continuing with history. We are a new dynasty but tradition continues.”
When Group Lotus owner Proton terminated Fernandes’ licence to use the Lotus Racing title in F1, he acquired the historic Team Lotus brand from David Hunt instead, a title the Malaysian admits is highly evocative.
“When I was asked to pick one word to describe Team Lotus, a million flooded into my mind!” Fernandes wrote.
“But eventually I had to come back to where it all started for me – dreams. Team Lotus is about dreams, and those dreams becoming reality.
“I remember when I was a boy, running a hole in the carpet with my model Lotus Formula 1 car. I had dreams then, I still do, but what I hope to inspire is the belief that if you dare to dream, you can achieve great things.”
The Lotus design team is confident that the T128 is a massive step forward over its predecessor, the relatively conservative T127 that the squad used to take unofficial ‘top new team’ honours in 2010.
Head of R&D and vehicle dynamics Elliot Dason-Barber said the new car’s suspension arrangement is an area where Lotus has made particular gains.
“The area that intrigues me the most is the front suspension, and the rear as well actually,” he said. “We’ve tried to push the boundaries with a few things to make it a bit lighter and more efficient.”
The team’s aerodynamic chief Marianne Hinson feels the design is visually more aggressive than last year’s car, which was created in a very short timespan after Lotus was awarded a Formula 1 entry at the second time of asking following BMW’s withdrawal.
“I can’t give away too many secrets, but I think the front half of the car is quite a big step away from the 2010 car,” she said. “Last year’s car was a bit blocky in the sidepod area, but this one looks a lot racier – it’s a lot smoother and curvier around the sidepods.”
Chief designer Lewis Butler said a lot of effort has gone into improving the packaging of the car to allow the aerodynamics to be more advanced.
“That was the biggest design challenge, actually – just trying to package everything a bit smaller,” he said. “We were trying to get that area around the driver really tight so the aerodynamicists were happy with it.”
The T128 will make its track debut at Valencia on Wednesday, joining the other teams for the second and third days of winter testing before holding a private filming session at the Spanish circuit on Friday.
Source: Autosport.com
Chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne believes that the T128 will set the basis for future cars. Autosport.com has the story.
Team Lotus’s new Renault-powered T128 challenger has been designed to form the development platform for the squad’s future cars, according to its chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne.
While the team’s first car – the T127 – was a conservative design that allowed Lotus to build up the squad’s internal infrastructure through 2010, the new machine has been created from scratch with a far more aggressive approach that Lotus hopes will allow it to develop forward beyond the next season.
“With last year’s car and especially the first half of the season it was just an exercise in survival, whereas from the middle of last year it was about building the team up – that’s when we started working on this car,” explained Gascoyne in the company’s Team Lotus Notes online magazine this morning.
“I think the thing that was a challenge this year was that the 2010 car really was a one-off, because of the way it was done with the design team and the time we had.
“There’s been almost no carry-over of parts for the 2011 car, whereas normally you’d have a substantial carry-over and the chance to optimise last year’s parts.”
Gascoyne added that the T128 carries many visual cues to contemporary Formula 1 design thinking and is considerably more aerodynamically advanced than its predecessor.
“It looks substantially different from last year’s car – it has a much more ‘current’ feel about it. And it’s the basis of our cars for the future,” said Gascoyne
“It really follows current design trends, and aerodynamically it’s much more evolved. I mean, a car is really the sum of 4000 small details, so it’s hard to pick out specific areas that are particularly brilliant, but overall it’s a much more optimised work of design and engineering.”
As part of the new 2011 rules, KERS is back in the sport but Team Lotus has stated that it will start the season without energy recovery system. Autosport.com has the details.
Team Lotus has confirmed that it will not use KERS at the start of the 2011 season, though it reckons it could add the energy recovery device at a later stage if necessary.
Chief designer Lewis Butler said his team had decided that KERS would have forced too many compromises in other areas of the design.
“The decision not to use KERS made the design job slightly easier, because packaging it in the car is always a bit more of a headache,” he said.
Lotus’s head of aerodynamics Marianne Hinson said the system would have forced particular compromises for her department.
“It’s the same for us in aerodynamics: no KERS is actually easier because packaging all the bits you need for it is actually quite limiting for some of the aero shapes you need in some areas,” she explained.
The team’s chief operating officer Keith Saunt said Lotus felt the potential gains from having KERS did not outweigh the packaging disadvantages at this stage in the outfit’s development.
“If KERS was going to get us from eighth to sixth then we’d have it,” he said. “But when you look at the weight of it and some of the engineering challenges, I think it’s a good decision not to start with it.”
He joked that he was sure Lotus could cope if it had to add KERS to the design later in the season.
“We might end up with it, who knows?” said Saunt. “But if we did we’ve got a lot of experienced people who could turn their hands to it.
“If we had to design a motorised catamaran canoe in a day, I reckon we could do that too! We’ve got some very clever people here.”
The T128 does feature the mandatory moveable rear wing, the other main rule change for 2011, and sporting director Dieter Gass is confident Lotus has done well in this area.
“It was a bit less of a challenge than I thought it would be,” he said. “Once you’ve looked at all the different concepts you can use, it wasn’t that hard to achieve a solution. I think we have quite a neat, simple system on this car.”
Team Lotus should be aiming to compete with Renault and Williams by the end of 2011, according to the team’s chief technical officer Mike Gascoyne.
Following the unveiling of the team’s new Renault-powered T128 in Team Lotus Notes online magazine this morning, Gascoyne was bullish about the car’s chances of progressing into the midfield fight this season.
“I think when you look at this car, it looks like a front-running car in every area,” he said. “We’ve said very clearly that we want to start challenging the established teams, and I think that’s very achievable.
“But that line has to continue going up, so we’ll have to target being up there with Toro Rosso, Sauber and Force India, and then end the season by targeting Williams and Renault.”
Gascoyne added that while he recognised every team is capable of taking a step forward in 2011, the fact that Lotus was still a new team gave it a sharper learning curve which he hoped would translate to a faster rate of improvement than some of its rivals.
“The thing is, every team says they’re going to progress each year and people might say, ‘Well why are you going to do it better, then?’ The simple fact is that they’re going to keep doing what they do – whereas we’re growing up,” he said.
“We’ve got resources coming on stream now, like new CFD resources and a new wind tunnel programme in the UK, that we’ve never had. What we can do now will get better.
“The problem for these other teams is that if we’ve been going for a year and then we start beating them, it’s a very clear message and it sends out a story which is embarrassing for them and good for us,” he said. “It would be great for Formula 1 if this car can take us into the midfield, because it shows what’s achievable for a properly run small team.”
The team’s chief operating officer Keith Saunt added that Lotus’s ambition was to break further into the top ten in the 2011 standings: “A lot of people might say I’m too optimistic… But I’d like to think we’ll get between 40 and 50 points this year.
“I think we’re targeting eighth strategically, but I doubt there’ll be a lot between sixth, seventh and eighth. Depending on how the other guys are doing, seventh could be achievable.”
Elliot Dason-Barber, the team’s head of R&D, was also confident that Lotus will be more competitive in 2011: “We’re definitely going to take a step forward with this car. Quite how much we’ll close the gap to the teams in front of us, we’ll see, but my hope is we’ll be competing with the teams that were a second or two ahead of us last season.
“When you’re two seconds behind someone it’s tough; when you’re half a second behind, you can start racing them.”
Source: Autosport.com
As for the drivers, Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen are prepared for the season ahead with the former saying he will score championship points from the off. Autosport.com has the story.
Jarno Trulli says he will be in a totally different mindset when he starts the 2011 season with Lotus, as he is confident that the team can aim for points from the outset this year.
The veteran Italian endured a tough 2010 campaign, bearing the brunt of Lotus’s reliability teething troubles. He admitted early in the year that he knew he would have to write the season off and focus on helping Lotus develop for the future.
But with the much more advanced T128 chassis revealed this morning, Trulli is expecting to have a substantially more competitive car for 2011.
“Sitting on the grid in Bahrain this year will feel very different – a different tension,” he said.
“Last year we were just aiming to finish the race. This year we’ll be aiming to finish in the points. With the package we have, that should be achievable.”
Trulli’s team-mate Heikki Kovalainen added that he had ramped up his physical preparations over the winter to ensure he was fitter than ever before going into what will be a pivotal season for Lotus.
“The last six weeks have been fantastic for me, doing basic training initially and now shifting up a gear to get the performance levels right,” said the Finn. “It’s been a great winter and I think I’m the best prepared I’ve ever been.”