Goodbye Team Lotus, hello Caterham

[Dare]

not all that eye catching is it?


It is goodbye Team Lotus and hello Caterham F1 Team as the outfit unveiled its logo for the 2012 season on Wednesday.

Their new logo is green, white and yellow and their 2012 challengers will be green and yellow.

It's the third year in a row that the team has changed its name. It entered the sport as Lotus Racing in 2010, but then switched to Team Lotus for the 2011 season. However, they then became involved in a drawn-out battle with Lotus Renault GP over the Lotus name.

Although the dispute ended up in court, it ended amicably with Team Lotus opting to adopt Caterham.

"With Team Lotus, I would have battled to the end if I felt it was the right thing to do, but when you take a dispassionate look at where we were it made absolute sense to start with a clean sheet, and Caterham has given us that chance," team boss Tony Fernandes said in the final edition of its e-magazine Team Lotus Notes.

"It's the best possible solution for where we want to go - partly because it gives us complete control over everything we do and, obviously, because there's simply no point racing to promote a road car company I don't own. The road car business has always been a sector I've wanted to explore and so here we are. But I can't stress enough; this is a serious business venture for us."

[cosworth151]

I like the colors. The type font looks a bit Star Trek.

[Scott]

I figure all Caterham owners should now get free paddock passes, eh Neil?  Write a letter - see how it goes  

[Neil.P]

This is all quite surreal to me Scott, all this. When I bought my car back in 2004 the company was really quite small... Now they have evolved into a F1 team I don't know how it happened

Anyway, hope they manage to produce another reasonably priced sports car for the road, that is as entertaining as the 7, as well as producing some good results in F1 (even a point would do )


Neil.P

[John S]

Good luck to em.  Pity their new F1 base is not going to be at the road car factory though, might have encouraged more buyers to collect their new cars.

The main Lotus company has announced that their factory Indycar & GP2 teams will be using black & gold as their livery, it seems part of the settlement was to allow the Caterham boys to use green & yellow accross the board in racing.

 

[Alianora La Canta]

A livery cannot be tied to a particular company (though oddly particularly distinctive shades of colour can). The new Lotus has established an identity with the black-and-gold colour scheme so it makes sense to stick to it. Same with the new Caterham. The colours are probably more associated with the teams than their names...

[lkjohnson1950]

I hope this is the breakthrough year for them and a move to the mid field is ahead.