The car Lotus hopes to challenge for honours in 2013, the E21, had its covers pulled off by drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean at the team’s base in Enstone earlier today.
Photo: Lotus F1 Team/LAT
The black-and-gold (and now red, it seems) liveried outfit had a successful season in 2012 with both drivers scoring a hatful of podiums and Raikkonen taking a late season victory in Abu Dhabi. Indeed, up until that point, the Finn was in contention for the driver’s title. His eventually finished 3rd.
It wasn’t all success for the team though. Romain Grosjean came under fire for his spate of first corner accidents which culminated in a one-race ban after eliminating several cars in Belgium, and the development of a passive double-DRS system that never raced took up a lot of their development time.
All pictures courtesy of Lotus F1 Team/LAT
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- Photo: Lotus F1 Team/LAT
Buzzwah
January 29, 2013
Grosjean’s going to have fun ramming other drivers with that !!
Rachel Clarke
January 29, 2013
I saw a few comments about that – they reckon the red flashes have been made bigger so the drivers can see him coming!
Willi Gauda
January 29, 2013
Looks quite interesting. It has a certain `bloodthirsty’ connotation,
)
esp. if you look at the blades in the front wing. Yes, it sounds quite
plausible that they introduced the red color to improve the visibility
of the car. Black road cars have after all higher chances of having
accidents so maybe this applies in F1 too (although Grosjean’s antics
certainly bias the chances of a crash quite significantly
Wiz
January 29, 2013
Good to see a bit of comedy from Lotus in the steering wheel design. My personal favourite is the Jenson button!