Lotus E22 to run for first time at Jerez

2014 F1 season

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Lotus will give their new E22 chassis its first test today at Jerez.

The last F1 car to make its first appearance will break cover one week after the first test of the new seasons concluded at the Spanish circuit.

Lotus have already issued some pictures from the test including one which shows a new angle on the car’s unique double-pronged nose.

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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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50 comments on “Lotus E22 to run for first time at Jerez”

  1. Lot of people saying the cockpit of the car doesn’t look very fancy.

    1. Old display as far as I can tell.

      1. @peartree – Lotus are running the McLaren Electronics PCU-6D display, as you correctly note, and not the more data-rich PCU-8D (as seen on the STR car, for example) – but both are viable and acceptable per FIA.

        Maybe @keithcollantine can advise as to whether or not any other teams are running the PCU-6D in place of the 8D?

  2. You gotta LOVE the unconspicuous placement of the Autosport magazine with the “Red Bull Crisis” cover…

    1. @dennis

      I know, I had a good laugh at that. Nice little message to Red Bull perhaps? ;-D

      1. They’d better have some decent running today and in Bahrain or this picture will come back and bite them.

        Pretty cocky if you ask me.

    2. Gutsy, as we do not yet know whether they will even be able to get all those 100 km in themselves today. Not to mention that Renault is said to have invited representatives of all their teams, because Lotus are running a couple of tweaks on the engine to solve the issues the PU (remembered to use the new acronym!) had in Jerez.

    3. amazing!!! Lotus keep funny as usual.

      I wonder if they managed to make a car as good as 2013 to fight for podiums
      If so, they are much better than we thought, losing so many people including top driver.

      1. Keep wondering…

      2. “amazing!!! Lotus keep funny as usual.” – my kind of People!
        WHO DARES WINS!

      3. They have a really good sense of humor in their marketing department. And it’s fantastic!

  3. Is this legit? Are they allowed to do so unless it’s for promotional purposes?

    1. I am sure they will post a video of sorts, just like Mercedes did, to show that they did in fact go there to film a promo of their new car @neelv27.

      There is no real limit to when a team can do their 2 days of filming day tracktime, although some teams might want to use those up only later in the year. Provided off course that they run on the Pirelli special promotional event tyres, and stay below 100 km/day

    2. Yes.

      With special tyres and a speed limit teams are allowed two(?) days of 100km driving for “promotional footage” – but it will really just be a shakedown to make sure all the components in the car can work in sync! – the promotional footage they gain is just a bonus! ;)

      Mercedes and Force India both used a day before the Jerez test and other teams have in previous years too. :)

    3. Thanks guys but I also need to know one more thing.

      What does it mean by ‘Promotional’? Is this some sort of a footage recorded for any of the sponsors and if not then is there a way the FIA can keep a tab on this?

      1. Not sure its defined by more than the name, and the technical limitations connected to such a day @neelv27.

        On the other hand, in the last 2 years or so teams have alway been careful to post a video, post some pictures etc. after such an event, to “prove” that the purpose was really about filming the car. Mainly because the other teams have become quite critical after reports of teams overdoing it (I think it was with Ferrari and/or Red Bull) some years back.

  4. Chris (@tophercheese21)
    7th February 2014, 10:08

    Interesting that they’ve decided to go with the “old-school” steering wheel. Unless they don’t want to reveal the real one…

    1. Yes, I thought they were all using the new one with the screen:
      http://youtu.be/Q74kP_a2jZM?t=4m57s (Peter Windsor demonstrates it)
      You’d think Pastor and Romain would want information about their pOil, tOil, pWat and tWt (that last one’s strangely inconsistent)…

      1. I love the part where he mentions “If the driver gets too riled up, they could put a picture of an iceberg”

        I instantly thought, put up a picture of a cute kitten… That’ll calm anyone down :P

    2. Or they don’t have enough money for a new one, despite sponsorship from TWO petroleum companies!

    3. @tophercheese21 – both the PCU-6D and the PCU-8D are homologated and approved for use in 2014 by FIA.

      The drivers honestly won’t have much use for ANY of the data on the wheel EXCEPT for lap-delta!!

  5. I think Lotus will be at the top again – if the Power Units hold.

    They do things differently, like now with filmingdays instead of testing.

    1. In the same way Mercedes and Force India.

      1. And torro rosso…

  6. Mikkel Sørensen (@)
    7th February 2014, 10:28

    So they decided not to go with an LCD screen on the steering wheel..
    Can someone say who else has dropped the LCD screen and who has not?

    1. @msoerensen Lotus, Williams, Caterham and Red Bull don’t have it according to Scrabs.

      1. Interesting

    2. LCD on steering wheel have been long gone since the introduction of spec ECU in 2008.

      1. But they are available again this year…

    1. Those sidepods look very nice and sculpted. Maybe just the camera angle, but they look very nice. Nose looks cool too

    2. The only flaw with that one, is that it is actually an older Renault car that is fitted with a new nose, rearwing and paintjob @somethingwittyer (R25?)

      1. @bascb I was going to mention how weird that rear wing was looking.

        1. With a beam wing too….

          1. And no sidepod vanes and bargeboards…

    3. @somethingwittyer Nice photo. Oh my Lotus has a lot of work to do old rear wing and very simplistic front wing shows a lot to do on the chassis front but that’s just half of the puzzle as Renault teams are also running against the clock.

  7. I still don’t believe this is the 2014 car …

    1. I agree with you. Looks like an E21 with a 2014 steering wheel to me

    2. I don’t think it is either @paeschli – Sommers I think it was showed a picture on twitter of the car from the front, where you could clearly see a beam wing.

      1. @vettel1 Beam wing rear wing, borrowed r25 front wing not to mention that the shot of the cockpit of the new E22-01 above shows an unpainted monocoque, with an old steering wheel, new display or old display the wheel itself should feature many new details but it doesn’t so you 2 are definitely right. Why? How far behind could they be?

        1. @peartree – it’s not an “old steering wheel”. This new (2014) wheel features a right-thumb actuated detent switch (in upper right corner of wheel, obviously) that wasn’t present on the 2013 unit…

        2. Todd (@braketurnaccelerate)
          8th February 2014, 7:27

          As someone on Twitter mentioned, the car seen in the link below is just a “show car”, using a bunch of spare parts out of the bins.

          http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/19ey72w0fg2a0jpg/ku-medium.jpg

          Have a look at this picture:
          https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bf3fF4cCcAAsR6h.jpg

  8. As far as wishful thinking is concerned, between the 3 loopholes (kinda) seen/heard until now, that is Mclaren rear suspension, Lotus nose and Ferrari missing turbocharger cover, the Lotus one is by far the coolest one. I wish it will be their “DDD”.

  9. Looks like Renault has agreed to pay Lotus for this “filming day” test and will have reps from RB, Toro Rosso and Caterham there to observe.

    http://paddocktalk.com/news/html/story-243086.html

    1. Yeah, I read about that yesterday as well. Seems its not just a shake-down filming day for the Enstone team, but also a lets hope this works now day for Renault (and their teams)

      1. That’s how all filming days work…

    2. To be fair it’s probably the best use of a filming day ever.
      I’m sure there are rules about not performance testing, but you have to get the thing to run to film it on the track!

  10. Seems like Lotus is playing it smart. They got some initial data from the other Renault teams, probably already knowing that some of the engines issues were going to dominate the test. So they take the data, and focus on the more private testing.

    Does anyone know if they were able to complete many laps? It will be interesting to see if Renaults problems continue into Bahrain.

    1. The maximum of laps for such a day is 100 km, which they confirmed they did on the second day in Jerez @geo (that is 22 laps), but it seems they did only short runs at low speeds – much like Caterham were doing on the friday of the last official test week.

      In any case, as Renault invited all the teams with their engines, in the end this promo-day was not as private as maybe Lotus would have liked!

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