Lotus reveal first images of new E23 Hybrid

2015 F1 season

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Lotus have become the second team to reveal their 2015 F1 car. The first pictures of the E23 Hybrid was published by the team today.

Lotus technical director Nick Chester described the car, which will be powered by Mercedes’ V6 hybrid turbo, as “a massive step forward”.

“It’s no secret that we struggled with last year’s car so we’ve targeted every area that caused us an issue,” he said. “We’ve made strong progress in the wind tunnel as well as in areas such as packaging and cooling.”

“We expect the E23 to perform far, far better than its predecessor.”

Chester said the new power unit “looks to be the one area of the car which could bring us the greatest performance gain”.

“It’s not just performance, but reliability and driveability as well as packaging and cooling too,” he explained.

Among the most obvious changes from last year’s E22 is the replacement of the unusual twin-tusk nose with a more conventional design. However Chester added the team also had to come to terms with last year’s banning of front-rear inter-connected suspension.

“We were delivered something of a blow last year when the front-rear interconnected suspension was outlawed mid-season,” he said. “The E23’s suspension design is specific to the updated regulations so we’re not trying to update a system originally intended to work a different way.”

“We learnt a lot in many areas of the car over the course of 2014 so there are many lessons which have been applied. We know we’ve made a big step. We won’t know how our car will fare in relative terms until we’re out in action at a grand prix, but we certainly expect to be much more competitive than last year.”

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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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86 comments on “Lotus reveal first images of new E23 Hybrid”

  1. It seems they also cut on the CG staff!

    1. Don’t understand. These images look fine for renderings. Hopefully they’re spending money on the real car instead.

      1. First year student of CGI arts can make better renders than these. Trust me, I’m not exaggerating at all.

        1. ColdFly F1 (@)
          26th January 2015, 21:03

          Renderings probably done by DigiPen (see diffuser rendering).
          I don’t believe they will be too happy with these comments.

          PS – to me the renderings look fine, exactly like a video game. Better than my doodles.

    2. Is it my imagination or is the tip of that nose to narrow for the 2015 nose design? Is that up to 280mm wide at the tip or were they (regulators) stipulating that any tip wider than 100 -130mm or thereabout, of the anteater noses but not exceeding 280mm is acceptable?

    3. I was thinking it looks like it was done in MS Paint.

    4. Gerulf Dösinger (@)
      26th January 2015, 17:28

      I was thinking almost the same but this is high-quality compared to the spinning Williams FW37 “presentation” on YouTube >>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWM77hPtdA

      They didn’t bother to add any kind of proper highlights, no “environment” at all and most probably the first best built-in studio lighting-kit their software offered. Oh, and they didn’t even bother to set the decals projection so the Rexona logo couldn’t be seen through the sidepod.

      There was zero effort put into this and into most of the other presentation-renderings. And it would only take few hours to produce something nice to add some impact to all this…

    5. The pictures are good for renderings. This wasn’t accomplished using the same methods as the Williams pictures. Williams used certainly a 3d model, whereas here the pictures were drawn-up.

      1. Gerulf Dösinger (@)
        26th January 2015, 22:42

        Taking a second look I can see that these might be just very well done concept renderings (“hand-made”). But no matter the method used: In all of the recent presentations there is a tremendous lack of visual confidence. What kind of message does this convey?

        These are multi-million dollar products and an audience spanning across the whole world will see them in action. So why present them in a way like these pictures would be a draft for a pitch? Give it some kind of atmosphere at least: Some depth, some shinyness something the eye can fix on. Just some kind of emotional response for a broader audience…

    6. It may have been done on purpose, they don’t want to give too many details away right now.

  2. That looks like an F3 car… lol

    1. edit* only from the first front view picture

      1. The car looks like a proper F1 race car to me. Nose is good. Seems Williams have dropped a clanger.

        1. The Williams solution may not be pretty, but if it winds up being fast, I doubt they’ll care too much.

        2. Fairly generic… I wonder how many cars Crashonado will scoop up with the low nose this year? ;)

  3. Damn, that looks good.

    1. Maybe to cool some parts that are placed differently in a Mercedes-Benz power unit?

      1. Indeed, usually the openings are all on the top to get air to the rear wing leading edge. This one makes me think of the first Ligier, the JS5… http://www.slotforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23852 @andae23 @keithcollantine

        1. @fastiesty I guess it’s similar to what Toro Rosso did last year, but a bit less elegant. It will probably make the rear wing a bit less efficient, so I’m guessing this is an emergency solution or something, realising pretty late in the design phase that they needed some more cooling.

          1. @andae23 That’s what I initially thought, for the change to Mercedes, but I’ve just read that it’s to shrink the sidepods further and get more air onto the rear diffuser.

          2. @fastiesty Hmm, makes sense.

          3. @andae23
            I would agree with what @fastiesty read. My first thought when I saw that front view was: “Hmmm, they’re trading off sidepod size to put some cooling around the driver’s head”.
            I’m not sure if that’s what TR was doing last year, but it seems the only explanation from this view???

          4. Oh, and I also thought they might be doing some funky new passive F-Duct thingy LOL

    2. It does, although it’s not very eye pleasing IMO.

    3. Two additional air intakes under the main one. Obvious attempt not to disturb the flow towards the rear wing by adding more width to upper part of the airbox. They are trying not to compromise cooling of the turbo and MGU-H as well. That was the only major weak spot of W05 last year…

  4. petebaldwin (@)
    26th January 2015, 14:18

    The livery is much nicer than in the last few years. Much less busy.

    1. Exactly @petebaldwin. Far more black, the beige (“gold”) is more delicately applied in smaller and more stylized pieces and the red bits do not mess up the whole because its only the mirrors, and bits of wing.

      1. Only red I miss, a bit, is the 2nd stripe on the side of the nose @petebaldwin, @bascb :)

  5. It’ll be interesting to see what this will look like in real life, but I’m loving the fact there’s no thumb.

    1. @philereid True, although here the nose looks too small to me. From the side angle, the front wing then looks like a tyre cutting device!

      1. On that note, March 711 anyone?! Apart from that, the car does look tidy with the new livery, if a bit short of sponsors.

      2. A new weapon in the Maldonado arsenal!

  6. Quite a lot less red, no Total sponsoring. Looking good, a bit of a shame for that the front wing’s base (?) is so far ahead the nose tip.

    1. @hunocsi It’s a bit like what we were saying with the Force India livery the other day. Take the sponsor’s logo colours out – in this case PDVSA red – and you’d have a really cracking livery here.

      1. yeah, much tidier livery this way.

      2. Yet you are noticing the PDVSA red, which is the whole point, so from an advertising viewpoint it is job well done.

  7. It seems the caterham slim nose concept was not too far off. Here lotus uses it in a much better way. The Globular airbox is an attempt to move the mickey mouse ears lower, to create a more cleaner air stream that goes to the rear wing.

  8. Great, great looking car.

  9. Nice nose and the livery looks better without so much red. I think the Lotus employees would’ve taken great pleasure in placing the ‘powered by Mercedes-Benz’ sticker on.

  10. looks like the novel double-dildo design has been moved to the back of the garage. lotus back on track!

  11. Really digging the livery, it looks so much better without all the ‘implied gold’ streaks and red everywhere.

  12. It looks great, but I’m concerned at the Rexona sponsorship they’ve lost to Wiliams…

    1. @jmc200 Also I’ve noticed Burn isn’t on there this year.

  13. Interesting to see how their rear wing support is sloping backward this much, that surely must have been a bit of a struggle to get it that way while still being stiff enough. Or maybe its by design so that the whole RW bends down under load :-)

  14. The Blade Runner (@)
    26th January 2015, 15:01

    Looks like a “proper” racing car and the livery is very nice. Not the complete livery change that certain elements of the media had suggested following Grosjean’s tweet last week though. Perhaps they’ll “do a Williams” and completely re-jig the livery and colouring before Melbourne…

    1. It looks like it might be one of the nicest looking F1 cars since they banned the 08 regulations in my opinion.

      1. I though the 2008 car were ugly as hell with all those hideous flaps, winglets, horns, dumbo flaps & stuff.

        With the exception of the really high noses I think the cars since 2009 have looked way better overall.

        1. Although to be fair those flaps and winglets made them look extremely racey and technical.

          1. Yeah, I agree. The 2008 cars just looked really extreme, which is what you’d expect from a formula 1 car – it really distinguished them from junior series cars. I also just generally liked the look of them.

            I still think the post-2009 cars look perfectly fine – I have no problem with them – but they just look a bit plain compared to the 2008 and earlier cars.

            This is pretty much what my ideal formula 1 car would look like:
            http://www.autosblog.com.ar/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Formula-1-2015-Nascar-Haas.jpg

  15. now THAT’S what I’m talking about! best nose and livery to date of any team. Finally a “normal” looking car.

  16. “We expect the E23 to perform far, far better than its predecessor.”
    HA! Couldn’t be much worse.

  17. they promised no ugly noses anymore…

  18. Nose looks good!

  19. “Lotus have become the second team to reveal their 2015 F1 car.”

    They’re the third aren’t they? I’m sure I saw a Williams the other day.

    1. Force India have only revealed their 2015 livery, the car will be revealed in February.

  20. Nice looking car, good (nose?) job by Lotus.

    So far, we’ve seen three 2015 cars, and Williams have the worst nose. the best looking car last year might be the worse looking car this year.

  21. She’s a looker mmm mm mm

  22. Instead of being a gentle bend, the nose suddenly becomes steep, but I guess more or less this is the shape FIA rule-makers hoped to get, and it’s probably the best we’ll see. I might say this every time, but the nose stopping before the front wing just seems wrong to me! It should definitely reach beyond, like in 2009.

    1. The nose looks great, but I agree that it should extend beyond the wing.
      I think that the ugliest thing in this year’s cars will be the wing that is hanging in the air in front of the nose, especially when viewing the car from the side. Even on the Williams car, I felt that the weird nose is far more visually acceptable than the very ugly and unpleasing view of the car from the side with the wing hanging in front of the very short nose. I also think that this hanging wing in front of the short nose will be a feature of all the 2015 F1 cars, but similar to the several past few years with the controversial visual features of F1 cars, once the racing begins, I will no more pay attention to such ugly features while watching because following the race live on screen in addition to the commentary and to the livetiming information is more than enough to prevent me from noticing such trivial details. Even last year during the first gp, with all the debate about the change in engine sound, I barely payed any attention to the change in the noise because I was very busy following that exciting race.

  23. Microsoft sponsorship appropriate, given that it’ll crash at the first corner.

    1. Not nice! But very funny LOL

    2. WOW, I love this comment. FORD finally dumped microsoft after getting very low ratings for 7 years according to a FORD exec in various owner surveys due to the usual dismal performance of any microsoft product. Thanks, Norris

  24. They still don’t have a proper gold colour on there. It really ruins it in my view.

    1. You mean “proper gold” like this?

      It’s the exact same shade the old JPS Lotuses used to use.

      1. I mean more like the one used on the R31. It looks much better in my opinion. the other gold isn’t really a gold.

        Just my opinion though.

  25. Simple, clean, elegant. I like.

  26. Looks good (compared to the cars from the last 2 years), but I am not optimistic for Enstone (Why are they STILL using the Lotus name? Pricemoney?). They lost a lot of good people since 2013.

    1. Prizemoney…

  27. Looks like a slightly bigger GP3 car.
    What have they done to F1? It’s about as extreme as a kids slide these days. :(

  28. Infinitely better than the look of last year’s car.

  29. It really looks like a Formula 3 car to me. It’s just so smooth. I might be the only one who wants this, but I think that the 2008 formula produced the coolest and prettiest cars. Or at least the ones that screamed “top-flight motorsport crown jewel”. These ones just look so plain.

    1. I agree, I loved the look of the 2008 cars. Particularly the McLaren.

    2. In my opinion, I think that the best looking F1 cars ever produced were produced during 2008. The Ferrari car during that year is by far the best looking car that I have ever seen.

  30. looks great! i love the nose, it looks top!

  31. So, they went from a nose designed by Andy Warhol on a bad acid trip last year to what my end up being the most bland nose on the grid this year. I approve. :)

  32. Looks very stylish and tidy, but also a bit dull to me. Nor this nose, nor the one on the Williams look like an aesthetical improvement compared to 2014. Guess I’ll be one of the very few with this opinion…

  33. My first impression was how clean the front wing is without all those layers of winglets and such which seemed not to make any difference when knocked off during a race. Regardless of all of the remarks regarding some esoteric nuance what really counts is how fast and traction!! Thanks, Norris

  34. Once again, these initial images released by the team are useless to read anything from. It’s not like they have much of an option either, with all that secrecy, they’ll be trying to hide their bag of tricks at testing as well. Just another aspect of F1 that distant’s itself from the fans.

  35. finally i can use pictures of grosjeans car as my desktop background again.

  36. I actually think the noses on this look a lot better than any of the noses last year. No matter how much racing I watched last year, I just could not get used to the Phallic Noses.

  37. Not bad, though I would have stretched those stripes at the front towards the tip of the nose.

  38. Looks nice, the performaces too

  39. The nose on the main picture seems to be completely different from that on the other pictures…

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