Team Lotus

- Published on Dec 3rd, 2010 by The Badger

When Tony Fernandes' Lotus outfit were granted entry to the 2010 F1 world championship in September of 2009 they faced a race against time to simply make the opening race. Six months is not generally considered a realistic amount of time in which to go from a blank sheet of paper to a fully functioning F1 car.

Amazingly they achieved it, subsequently going on to prove the most capable new addition to last year's field. This was helped in no small part by the financial and practical input of Malaysian airline billionaire Fernandes and journeyman technical chief Mike Gascoyne, as well as an extremely hard-working group of people at home and on the road.

Driver-wise they were very smart too, choosing veteran Jarno Trulli and McLaren refugee Heikki Kovalainen - both F1 race-winners - to pilot the cars. That the season was a struggle came as no surprise, but of the three new teams it was clear that they had made the best job of starting an F1 squad from scratch. There were no points finishes but the team did seal tenth in the constructors' standings and head in to 2011 with plenty of optimism. Red Bull transmissions and Renault engines, coupled with a car that Gascoyne was able to commit a decent amount of time to, mean they will be expected to make the transition to the midfield this season.