Lotus boss sacked

Dany Bahar, the CEO of Group Lotus, has been suspended by the new owners of the parent company, DRB-Hicom.

Bahar was deeply involved in the controversy concerning the two Lotus teams, beginning in 2010, when Lotus Racing was racing in F1. That team later became Caterham, but Group Lotus had a deal with Tony Fernandes, the team principal of Caterham, to use the Lotus branding. Fernandes wanted to use the Team Lotus name and logo for 2011, but Proton, the previous owners of Group Lotus, said no. A court case decided that Fernandes could use the Team Lotus roundel and the name, but not ‘Lotus’ on its own. Read more on that here.

Today the announcement came, that Dany Bahar has been suspended from his post,  “while an investigation is carried out into a complaint about his conduct.”

A statement from Group Lotus read:

“As a result of a number of media inquiries, Group Lotus plc (“Lotus”) can today confirm that, following an operational review, chief executive Dany Bahar has been temporarily suspended from his role to facilitate an investigation into a complaint about his conduct made by Lotus’ penultimate parent company, DRB-HICOM Berhad.”

“The penultimate holding company would like to stress it is business as usual at Lotus. We fully support the company and will continue to support Lotus in its business endeavours and development.”

Petrov stirring Massa´s pot

Vitaly Petrov has joined the increasingly growing choir of people who thinks they know more about the Felipe Massa situation.

The Caterham driver, who formerly raced for Renault say he thinks it is very likely that Ferrari will not hold on to Felipe Massa to finish the season. Massa has been heavily under fire for his performance, in the previous two seasons he has racked up 262 points against team mate Fernando Alonso´s 509 points, or just under half the points tally from Alonso, and the media has written the eulogy for his career.

And though Petrov believes that Massa will be fired before the season ends, it won´t happen soon, as several media outlets have stated, says Petrov.

“I don’t think they’ll fire Massa just now. At least not until August,” says Petrov.

“I wouldn’t say that Ferrari are criticising him that strongly,” he said. “They’re not saying he has one more chance or anything like that.”

Spanish Grand Prix preview – Caterham

Looking at the performance of the Caterham team from the first four races, the team has taken a small step backwards and are still chasing their first points. According to team principal Tony Fernandes, the results are looking ‘encouraging’ but admits that there is still a lot of work to be done.

“We head back to Europe after what has been an encouraging first four races for the team,” said Fernandes. “We may not have quite bridged the gap to the midfield pack yet, but we are clearly much closer than we were this time last year, particularly on race day when we have seen clear evidence of the progress we have made.

“Having been with us for four races now, I am very pleased with the job Vitaly has been doing for the team. He is obviously a fighter and he is pushing his team mate well, especially on Sundays, and that is good for the whole team. I think Heikki is due a run of better luck in the races as he has been pushing extremely hard in qualifying, particularly to get himself into Q2 in Bahrain, but he has not had the same luck when the lights go out on race day. Hopefully that will change in Barcelona and we will be able to see both cars fighting to the chequered flag on Sunday.”

Heikki Kovalainen:

“Barcelona’s a good circuit where the main challenge is to nail everything absolutely perfectly. If you make a half a tenth of a mistake it can cost you a grid position and it’s a race weekend where you have to focus on the details to give yourself the best chance of success. It’s a track with a lot of high-speed corners, some where you have to be really on it to save time, and you have to be pretty committed going into the braking zone in T1 as that’s where there is an overtaking chance. For the fans it’s often a pretty quiet race because it’s a tough circuit to overtake on, but that makes qualifying even more crucial and means you have to get the plan on Saturday absolutely right.”

Last year Vitaly Petrov placed his Renault in 6th place for the race, in which he ended just outside the points in 11th. And this year, it will be harder to get into the points, he admits.

“After a good test in Mugello we are all looking forward to getting back to racing in Spain. Barcelona is a track I know well and one I like racing on. I was on the podium there in GP2 in 2009 and while I know that’s out of reach for us at the moment, we will all be focusing on continuing to take the fight to the cars ahead and repeating the sort of performances we’ve put in so far this season, particularly on Sundays.”

 

Group Lotus responds to rumours

As I said a few days ago, the Lotus F1 team is no longer sponsored by the car company by the same name. However, Proton, the owners of Group Lotus, has issued a loan of £30m, under the condition that the team itself has been put up as collateral. If the loan is not repaid in time, Proton will take over the team.

A statement reads:

“Lotus F1 Team and Group Lotus have reshaped their commercial relationship earlier this year. The new governance agreement signifies the continued commitment of Group Lotus to the team and the sport.

“Group Lotus’s branding and marketing rights and subsequent activities remain unaffected by the new agreement until at least 2017. Alongside continued branding and title partnership status, Group Lotus is also the exclusive master licensee for all Lotus F1 Team merchandise.

“The new agreement was reached following Group Lotus owners Proton providing team owners Genii with a £30m loan which is repayable within three years. In order to secure the loan, Genii used 100 percent of the F1 team’s assets as collateral, meaning that under the conditions of the loan agreement Proton have been given full title guarantee to all plant, machinery, show cars, computers, office and the Lotus F1 Team headquarters.

“In addition, Proton retains the rights to purchase 10 percent of the F1 team. Another 10 percent share option will be activated if the team default on their loan obligations with Proton.”

At the same time, you could read a longer and rather bizarre statement from the team itself, dishing out un-disguised content for several people, including Tony Fernandes, Joe Saward and others. The statement is here in its entirety:

Take a little look at what we found online. Don’t you think it’s funny? We do. We had a good old giggle. After all, we love a bit of self irony, just as well really. Although it’s funny, this one’s not accurate but then again, why let the facts get in the way of a good story? The inconvenient truth is–surprise, surprise–we have never said that there are no problems at Lotus.

So whilst lots of people obviously feel the need to comment on Lotus’ current situation in the absence of proper facts or evidence, we can’t ignore these particular mistruths any longer even if we would like to, so we have decided to turn a negative into a positive and use this hilarious piece of ‘art’ to set the record straight regarding the status quo at Group Lotus and try to return a little stability to a fast changing situation.

False rumour #1: Dany Bahar is no longer CEO of Group Lotus.

Fact: Rubbish – Dany Bahar still is.

False rumour #2: Dato’ Sri Syed is no longer Managing Director of Proton.

Fact: Again rubbish. He still is.

You can thank good old Tony Fernandes for these two. Don’t take everything he tweets too seriously—perhaps he’s still frustrated about owning Caterham instead of Lotus and the fact that he fights HRT and Marussia instead of Mercedes and Ferrari in F1.

And whilst we’re on the subject of jokes—do you know the latest F1 joke? Mike Gascoyne, Caterham Group’s Chief Technical Officer, has gone missing. Why? He’s looking for the 30 to 40 points he predicted for the last F1 season. Funny.

Speaking of F1: It seems that one special so called ‘independent’ source is at the root of the lion’s share of damaging rumours and misleading stories. The delightful Joe Saward which leads us nicely to…

False rumour #3: Joe Saward is JUST an independent journalist.

Fact: He is an active Director for the Caterham Group.

And unlike some, we don’t want to get too personal, so we’ll leave it to you to judge how ‘independent’ his stories about Lotus are.

False rumour #4: Group Lotus is no longer involved in F1.

Fact: Lotus F1 Team and Group Lotus have reshaped their commercial relationship earlier this year. The new governance agreement signifies the continued commitment of Group Lotus to the team and the sport.

Group Lotus’ branding and marketing rights and subsequent activities remain unaffected by the new agreement until at least 2017. Alongside continued branding and title partnership status, Group Lotus is also the exclusive master licensee for all Lotus F1 Team merchandise.

The new agreement was reached following Group Lotus owners Proton providing team owners Genii with a £30m loan which is repayable within three years. In order to secure the loan Genii used 100% of the F1 team’s assets as collateral meaning that under the conditions of the loan agreement Proton have been given full title guarantee to all plant, machinery, show cars, computers, office and the Lotus F1 Team headquarters.

In addition Proton retains the rights to purchase 10% of the F1 team. Another 10% share option will be activated if the team default on their loan obligations with Proton.

Again we leave it to your judgement how ‘bad’ Lotus’ current situation in F1 is. And speaking of bad situations…

False rumour #5: Group Lotus is going into administration.

Fact: Rubbish. The takeover of our parent company Proton by DRB-HICOM couldn’t have come at a worse time, but up until that point Proton was (and still remains) fully committed to our five year business plan to create jobs and to expand the factory and business. With the takeover process the funding has been restricted and DRB-HICOM is taking time to understand what to do with the business. DRB-HICOM is currently in the middle of due diligence of Group Lotus and there have been and continue to be positive discussions between Group Lotus senior management and senior management at DRB-HICOM both here in Hethel and in Malaysia. At no point has DRB-HICOM indicated to Group Lotus that it intends to put the company into administration. The over-active rumour mill is seriously damaging our business reputation, image and credibility but it is what it is.

The simple fact is, and we haven’t denied this—Lotus is going through a very difficult phase at the moment but we are showing true fighting spirit every day in trying to keep this vision alive. This is also a fact—no matter what people outside of Lotus may say or tweet or blog.”

Lotus drops F1

Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean are no longer driving for Lotus.

The title sponsorship between the car manufacturer Group Lotus and theF1 team Lotus F1, have been terminated, said chairman of Lotus F1 Team, Gerard Lopez. Raikkonen and Grosjean are still driving for Lotus F1 Team, owned by Genii Capital, but this only represents the Lotus name, and nothing more.

Say what? Yes, it is all very confusing. remember back in 2010 when he heard that Lotus Racing would be back? But that they would be called Team Lotus from 2011, but that failed becaise Group Lotus told Team Lotus that they dodn´t want that, so they went to court and Team Lotus said they won over Group LOtus, but Group Lotus said they beat Team Lotus? So just to re-kindle some of the ‘magic’ we all love so well in the tragic which is Lotus vs Lotus, here are some highlights:

Genii Capital bought a majority stake in Renault F1 Team back in 2009. The idea was to bring renault back to their old winning ways. Renault kept 25% of the shares, but in 2010 sold their lot to Genii Capital. Group Lotus became title sponsor, backed by Proton, a deal which meant that Group Lotus(those are the guys with Dany bahar, Eric Lux and Gerard Lopez, not to be confused with Tony Fernandes´ Team Lotus, wcich is now called Caterham) became a huge partner in Lotus Renault GP, and remain as title sponsor until the end of 2017.

So for 2012 Lotus Renault GP now changed their name to Lotus F1 Team, an agreement made between Fernandes and Bahar. However, two months ago Syed Mokhtar Al-Bukhary´s DRB-Hicom bought the government-owned Proton, remember they own Group Lotus, for $400m, and whilst carrying out the post-acquisition due dulligence, froze the assets of the business, including Lotus.

Proton has been in deep financial distress for years, losing money mainly due to Group Lotus, which hasn´t made money since the mid-90´s. In January of this ywar, Lopez said that Genii Capital was committed to Lotus F1 Team and in february he said that the company might be interested in buying Group Lotus, “provided they believed there is something good that can be done by acquiring the company”.

It looks like there might have been some sort of exchange of words between Lopez and Bahar, resulting in a failure to deliver the money need for the title sponsorship, and as such Genii Capital can rightly terminate the agreement due to a breached contract.

There is no way the otehr teams will accept another name change this fast, expecially since the last disoute went to court, with both sides claiming a win. And remember back to 2010, when Fernandes said that the Lotus name was back in F1? Now it seems that from 2013, the Lotus name are once more gone.

Genii Capital might be looking to buy Group Lotus, but don´t expect Tony Fernandes to fork out the cash needed to re-purchase the Lotus name, a right he gave away the second he changed his team to Caterham. As Steve Davies, of Skiddmark, writes:

“Lotus 5-year ‘New Era’ Business Plan was never viable [...] – not in the real world. For a business that hasn’t turned a profit in 15 years, whose plan depended on £360 million in funding from Asian investors (£120 million from Proton) and needs to generate £110 million (extra) from sales of its own cars, success was always based upon ‘the most optimistic’ of scenarios.”

 

Force India loses court case

The Force India team has lost a court case against Aerolab, in a legal dispute over the use of intellectual property, the London High Court ruled on Wednesday.

After a 14-day hearing held in the Chancery Division of the London High Court, involving Team Lotus(now Caterham), Force India and the Italian wind tunnel company, Aerolab, Mr Justice Arnold ruled that Force India are to pay €850,000 to Aerolab in outstanding fees, while the team in turn has been granted €25,000 in compensation. The legal dispute arose when Force India claimed that Aerolab had ‘systematically copied’ significant parts of Force India´s design, when the Italian company were designing the T27 for Team Lotus.The CAD models from Force India had been used, but as an ‘opportunistic short cut’, said the judge.

Mr Justice Arnold ruled that although there were small parts found in the T27 from the Force India design, the were no systematic copying taking place.

Force India then tried to convince everyone that they won the case, which they did not, since they are ordered to pay Aerolab the €850,000, and only receiving €25,000 in compensation. A statement on the team website reads:

“The case was heard at the High Court, London during January 2012 with Mr Justice Arnold finding Team Lotus (now known as Caterham) and Aerolab liable for copyright infringement and using confidential information respectively,” read Force India’s statement.

“Some parts created using Force India confidential information were used on the Team Lotus race cars in the early part of the 2010 season.”

It has been discussed if the sole reason for the Force India team to drag this into a court case and prolong the entire issue, is due to the fact that they simply wanted to delay the money it owed to Aerolab, for terminating the contract early in 2009. Aerolab managing director Jean Claude Migeot said:

“It’s been such a long story – so long, and so big, for such a small issue – but I am glad to say it’s over,” Migeot told Autosport. “The judge made his conviction on the right side – putting things right is always very satisfactory.

“We always thought it was a huge trial for such a short matter, a nonsense. Force India was adamant it had a multi-million case though and there was no way of even opening a discussion and it unfortunately ended in the courts.

“It was a big story brought up to delay the payment they owed us from 2009 – they had hoped to find the perfect excuse.”

This issue should be over for Force India, but in usual backwards practice, the team is now knocking on FIA´s doors to look into the use of their intellectual property at other teams.

“The UK High Court judgement, in respect of the illegal copying, will now be referred for the consideration of Formula One’s governing body, the FIA, whilst the Italian criminal case against Mike Gascoyne, Tony Fernandes and Jean Claude Migeot remains ongoing,” the Force India statement said.

 

 

Double retirement for Caterham

The Caterham team did not enjoy very much of the first race of the season, at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia.

Starting 18th and 19th for Kovalainen and Petrov respectively, and not in any way where the team hoped to be, there wasn´t much to be happy about for the green-and-yellow coloured team on Sunday. According to Heikki Kovalainen he encountered problems from the start.

“From very early on I could start to feel that the steering wheel was starting to point to the right in straight lines,” the Finn said. “Under braking the car was starting to pull to left, something weird was going on. We had to have a look and the steering arm was coming lose, so it was just one of those days.

“It was a tough day from the beginning, the KERS packed up at the start. DRS didn’t work either, but it picked up eventually, so it was one of those days. Even with these problems we were running well, but next time we’ll have another go.”

Vitaly Petrov stopped on the track in the middle of the start/finish straight, which caused a safety car period, and shortly after Kovalainen also retired.

 

Caterham signs Rossi

Caterham has signed Alexander Rossi as their 2012 test driver, the team confirmed on Friday.

“Alexander Rossi has today been confirmed as Caterham F1 Team’s Test Driver, joining Race Drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Vitaly Petrov, and Reserve Driver Giedo van der Garde in the Anglo/Malaysian team’s line-up. In his F1 role, he will be taking part in FP1 sessions in 2012, helping him to gain further experience at the highest level of global motorsport and further embedding him within the Caterham F1 Team.

“In addition, Alexander has confirmed today that he will be competing for the second year in World Series by Renault 3.5, the championship in which he finished third in his rookie season. In 2012 he will be driving for the newly-formed Arden Caterham team, aiming to fight for outright championship victory from the first race at Motorland Aragon on May 5-6.
 
“Tony Fernandes, Team Principal of Caterham F1 Team: “Today’s announcement marks an important next step for Caterham F1 Team and Alexander’s career. As our Official F1 Test Driver, Alexander is a key figure in our long-term plans and the investment we are making in him now will help him make the most of the natural talent he has at his disposal. We see 2012 as an important year for Alexander as he will be combining a full calendar in World Series by Renault, a championship he has a very good chance of winning, with his Test Driver role and giving him the chance to take part in FP1 gives him the platform from which he can grow into an even bigger F1 role.”

“Alexander Rossi: “I am absolutely delighted that we have been able to make this dual announcement today. My goal to be in Formula One is one step closer after being signed as Test Driver for Caterham F1 Team. I want to thank Tony Fernandes, Kamarudin Meranun and Riad Asmat for their trust in me and long-term commitment to my career. The Caterham F1 Team support, coupled with the efforts of my management and investors, has brought my goal of reaching an F1 race seat one step closer.

“In the past year I have spent time in Hingham at the factory and built solid relationships right across the team. I feel really comfortable with everyone and am looking forward to growing as a professional with Caterham and acquiring as much experience as possible from Friday Practice, the F1 simulator and time with the team.

“Winter training has been very good as Pro Performance, Caterham F1 Team’s physios, are looking after all my fitness and nutrition, preparing me for this season and my next step to F1. I am fully ready for the task at hand. I have not been in a car since the F1 rookie test in Abu Dhabi last November, but have been on the simulator. I am very eager for World Series by Renault testing to begin next week and to get down to work, where I’ll be running with Arden Caterham in the classic green and yellow colors. The 2011 season was good, but now I have that experience under my belt and I’m determined to fight for the championship throughout the 2012 season. This is going to be an incredible year!”