Lotus F1 team information

Lotus

Active years: 1958-1994, 2010-
Previous identities: Toleman
(1981-1985), Benetton
(1986-2001), Renault (2002-2012)

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Results
Cars
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Headquarters
Major team personnel

History

Lotus was one of the leading outfits of the sixties and seventies when it was run by Colin Chapman. Drivers like Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Emerson Fittipaldi and Mario Andretti won championships in a series of ground-breaking Lotuses.

They were famed for producing leaps ahead in technology. Cars like the Cosworth DFV-powered 49, the wedge-shaped 72 and the ground effect 79 left the opposition reeling.

But Lotus were also prone to producing over-ambitious and unreliable machines. Sometimes Chapman found himself pursuing what turned out to be technological dead-ends for F1 cars such as turbine power or four-wheel-drive. Other times he got into fights with the governing body, such as when he produced the twin-chassis 88 which was banned before it started a race.

By the time of Chapman’s death in 1982 the team had already won its last championship. Further race wins followed, most coming courtesy of Ayrton Senna in the mid-eighties. But by the early nineties Lotus was on its last legs and it collapsed before the 1995 season.

A new Lotus team, run by Tony Fernandes, entered F1 in 2010. However following a dispute with car manufacturer Group Lotus, the name changed hands in 2012. The team which competed as Renault in 2011 became Lotus, and Fernandes’ team was rebranded as Caterham.

The third iteration of Lotus rediscovered its winning ways with Kimi Raikkonen in 2012, triumphing in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Raikkonen, returning to F1 after a two-year break, ended the year third in the drivers’ championship and the team beat Mercedes to fourth in the constructors’ points.

Results

http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/charts/stats.csv

	1958	1959	1960	1961	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968	1969	1970	1971	1972	1973	1974	1975	1976	1977	1978	1979	1980	1981	1982	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Championship position	6	4	2	2	2	1	3	1	5	2	1	3	1	5	1	1	4	7	4	2	1	4	5	7	5	8	3	4	3	3	4	6	8	9	5	6																	10	10	4
Points	3	5	34	32	37	58	40	56	21	50	62	47	59	21	61	92	42	9	29	62	86	39	14	22	30	12	47	71	58	64	23	15	3	3	13	12	0																0	0	303
Wins	0	0	2	3	3	7	3	6	1	4	5	2	6	0	5	7	3	0	1	5	8	0	0	0	1	0	0	3	2	2	0	0	0	0	0	0	0																0	0	1
Pole positions	0	0	4	1	6	7	5	6	2	9	0	5	5	3	0	3	10	1	0	1	7	12	0	0	0	0	1	2	8	8	1	0	0	0	0	0	0																0	0	0

Cars

View pictures of Lotus’s F1 cars

Drivers

See the complete list of Lotus F1 drivers.

Headquarters

Lotus F1 Team,
Whiteways Technical Centre,
Enstone,
Oxfordshire,
OX7 4EE,
United Kingdom

Major team personnel

Chairman: Gerard Lopez
Team principal: Eric Boullier
Chief executive officer: Patrick Louis
Chief operating officer: Thomas Mayer
Technical director: Nick Chester
Trackside operations director: Alan Permane
Chief designer: Martin Tolliday
Deputy managing director, engine: Rob White
Head of aerodynamics: Dirk De Beer
Team manager: Paul Seaby
Race team chief mechanic: Greg Baker
Floating number one mechanic: Daniel Pugh
Engineering co-ordinator: Phil Mitchell
Chief race engineer: Ciaron Pilbeam
Race engineer (Kimi Raikkonen): Mark Slade
Race engineer (Romain Grosjean): Ayao Komatsu