Caterham set to be first to reveal 2012 F1 car

2012 F1 season

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Lotus T128

Caterham have announced their F1 car will be seen for the first time on January 26th – earlier than any of the other teams’ launch dates.

The team announced on Twitter they will show the first pictures of their car on their Twitter feed, Facebook page and in F1 Racing magazine.

Caterham, who raced as Lotus in 2011, will call their 2012 car the CT01.

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2012 F1 season


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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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53 comments on “Caterham set to be first to reveal 2012 F1 car”

  1. Just seen this on Twitter and came straight here!

    I’d just cancelled my subscription to F1 Racing ironically (I did the 3 for £1 deal) but I’ll buy this one, I love a new F1 car.

    1. You sound excited :D

      1. Most exciting part of the F1 year!

        1. Most exciting part of the F1 year!

          Totally agree.

    2. Couldnt agree more, it’s almost like a new baby

  2. They are either very organised.or ran out of ideas very early.

    1. or have nothing worth hiding ;-)

      1. Or aren’t showing you everything.

        1. ..your right, if its anything like last year we won’t see a thing. I think it was the second launch last year and a big disappointment.

          I love car launches.

          1. I can’t wait for the first Caterham F1 car, I’ve got high hopes for them this year. I really like Mike Gascoigne and Heiki.

            I agree they might not show too much in the magazine straight away, remember a photo shoot probably allows them to assess every photo before it gets published to ensure they don’t let anything too interesting get out. Whereas at the first test all the cards are on the table!

  3. Wonder if they show some computer renders of the car or real photographs? If I recall correctly the lotus launch of the 2011 was just computer renders and not single real picture of the car. Or do I remember wrong…

    1. The pic in this article is from the 2011 launch I think, and looks like a render.

    2. They have quite a few teaser pictures on facebook here.

      This suggests to me that It’ll be the real car.

      1. @Mike I came to the conclusion last year that the T128 launch pictures were renders also. I don’t think they would get away with charging people for a magazine that contains no real images. I know i’d be annoyed.

        1. They were renders last year, and not even very good ones. The dark setting in a parking garage made it hard to make out any details of the car and left me disappointed. I hope by this time next week Caterham has upped their game and provided us some real photos of the new car.

          1. @adam-tate Thinking about it, they were the first team to pass the homologation test with their 2012 chassis and that was back in the middle of December…

            https://www.racefans.net/2011/12/17/1712/

            So I imagine that it will be the real deal in the magazine.

          2. @AndrewTanner

            they were the first team to pass the homologation test with their 2012 chassis

            Well one of the first, at least four times passed before Christmas.

          3. Teams* how did I type times, doh.

    3. Borat Sagdiyev
      19th January 2012, 15:30

      The real photo of T128 launch was at Lotus Notes.

  4. Would’ve preferred them call it the CT03, however, with their colour scheme, I’m quite sure it will be one of the more attractive cars on the grid.

    So happy they kept it.

  5. Maybe they’ve got something to hide, like Red Bull?

    1. @AndrewTanner may be there drivers line up.

      1. @Wasif1 You might be on to something there!

      2. Good call, You never know.

    2. @AndrewTanner It’d be great to see such a small team having a great innovation (like F-Duct, off-throttle blowing). It seems it’s only the big teams doing that.

      1. @enigma It would be great, yep. Don’t see it happening though, they probably wouldn’t want to launch the car so early if they thought they had something worth keeping a secret. That said, you can always ask the photographer to gloss over certain areas I guess!

  6. It might be just my dirty mind, but the CT01 reminds me of a female body part. DTY CT01 could be a license plate.

    1. It’s your dirty mind.

  7. I hope these will not me only renders like last year.

  8. Besides the colour, it will probably look exactly the same.

  9. Who will be there drivers? I mean any chance of Petrov to replace Trulli.

    1. Have i missed something i thought Trulli was retained for 2012

      1. @scribbler He has got a contract for 2012:

        2012 F1 Drivers and Teams

        But there have been rumours someone could take his place. First it was Ricciardo, then when he got a Toro Rosso seat the rumour-mongers moved onto Petrov.

        Who knows, they could turn out to be right in the end, but at the moment Caterham have two contracted drivers and they’re Kovalainen and Trulli.

        1. Trulli is missing from the Group photo i noticed. Curious

          1. @scribbler What group photo?

          2. @keithcollantine This one, maybe? I can’t see him.

  10. Wern’t brawn one of the first to unveil there car that went on to win? It could be a sign of confidence not necessarily run out of ideas. Sometimes you can overdesign things. They will be able to tweek throughout the year as long as they have the basics right the bells and whistles can be added later. Either way its a brave move and there is obviously nothing visually ‘out of the ordinary so that the other second tier teams can’t copy. Will this design move them further into the midfield?

    1. It could also be an opportunity to steal the limelight and get all those sponsors more attention (or get more sponsors from all that attention).

    2. Brawn? You mean in 2009? They were the last weren’t they?

      1. I seem to remember them only turning up at the final test, could be wrong though

      2. Yep, only had one official test I believe. They’d seen everybody else’s time around Barcelona and couldn’t believe how slow they were.

    3. I thought they were the last as well.

    4. It could be a sign of confidence not necessarily run out of ideas.

      I’d say it’s more likely Caterham were ready first. They submitted their car to the FIA crash tests (and passed them) before anyone else, so they’re probably running on a completely different timetable.

  11. wow, Ferrari are going to be naffed off that someone beat them to the punch this year.

    When was the last time someone unveiled their car before them?

    1. @graham228221 Actually, McLaren had already said they were going to launch their car before Ferrari – and a proper launch too, rather than a virtual one. See the dates in the calendar.

      1. lol! @keithcollantine i actually thought before I posted that message “i’d better check the google calendar for the last few years, make sure i haven’t just made that up”. So i checked it, surprised to see it went back to 2009…

        didn’t check this year though – d’oh!

      2. My wife has taken the habit of looking at the calendar to know which week end to book for reunion with her family, so that I am not distracted by F1 while talking to the mother in law. Achievement unlocked!

    2. I was thinking the same – Ferrari have always been a competitive team and so had their car ready immediately to test it as much as possible – obviously there have been some exceptions, like in 2005, when they started the season with the F2004M. But since I started following F1 they’ve always been the first to launch their cars. This may show a change of the way they work, and hopefully an improvement on the results!

  12. I just can’t wait for all the car launches. I find the close season so hard. I just can’t get enough F1! Thanks to everyone on here for feeding my F1 interest. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the teams have adapted to the changes in the regulations.

  13. I kind of miss the days when McLaren would shut down a city for the night and unveil their cars before hundreds of thousand of people before driving them around the city with fireworks, rock music and Michael Bay production values. It was excessive, it was unnecessary, and it was so much fun.

    1. I don’t mind any kind of launch as long as it’s streamed as well!

  14. Will you just listen to you lot. You’re like a bunch of expectant grandparents dying to see just how beautiful the new grandchild will be and who it will take after. It’s like the first buds of spring in a new year. Great innit!!!

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