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Lotus plans motorsport return
20 October 2009
Lotus is investigating a return to Indycar, GT racing and Le Mans, as well as a deeper involvement in Formula One under new CEO Dany Bahar.
Bahar, who has previously worked for the Ferrari and Red Bull F1 teams, confirmed the legendary Lotus name would make a prominent comeback to motorsport to return to the days last seen under Colin Chapman.
“Lotus will return to motorsport,” Bahar told Lotus employees. “We will investigate participation in Indycar series, GT and Le Mans racing amongst other series around the globe to demonstrate the shared technology.”
Bahar plans to use motorsport as a platform for showcasing Lotus's road cars, and will apply knowledge gained while racing to road car development.
“I believe that this [motorsport] is the perfect platform to showcase our capabilities; racing is part of our heritage and even today the technology in our road cars is derived from racing,” he said.
Bahar also confirmed there was no direct link between his firm, Group Lotus, and the new team entering F1 next year, Team Lotus. Parent firm Proton owns the Team Lotus name and has given permission for a Malaysian-backed consortium to use it on its F1 cars next year. Team Lotus will initially be based in Norfolk, before moving to Malaysia in the future.
Although there is no direct financial involvement between Team and Group Lotus, the two firms would be liaising and Bahar refused to rule out a full return to the sport in the future.
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