Here's Lotus' engine cover exploding

Romain Grosjean radioed in "I think I lost something on the straight" during free Practice 2 at the Circuit de Catalunya today.

Understatement of the year as his Lotus E23 Hybrid's engine cover completely disintegrated at close to 200 mph.

#clusterfu*k: Lotus falling apart .

Eric Bouillier

Incredible, Lotus team principal Eric Boullier quits Team Lotus and, according to most of the British press, will go to Mclaren to take Martin Whitmarsh's job.   CEO Gerard Lopez will do double duty as team principal at Lotus despite having no experience at it.

Gerard Lopez

That Whitmarsh would get canned (or promoted out) was expected but Boullier's move to Woking, if confirmed, takes everyone by surprise.  Especially so as this was announced within hours of the 2014 car presentation and that, usually, personnel take a six month sabbatical  between teams.

Lotus, one of the top four team last season, is left decimated: lead designer James Allison and Kimi Raikkonen  left for Ferrari,  it failed to pay many on its staff, failed to complete their 2014 car in time for the Jerez test next week, had to hire Pastor Maldonado.  

A fall from grace Lotus will be hard pressed to put a cute hashtag to.

This happened

Outside of Venezuela, I'm not sure there is a single person who thinks this was a good idea....

Lotus is passive/aggressive with Kimi

Lotus still butthurt by Kimi Rakkonen's departure.

We all remember the whiny twitter posts from Lotus after Raikkonen announced he had enough of driving for free and would  be off to the land of tortellini and Lambrusco.

After statements proclaiming Gosjean as team leader, we figured things were tense at Lotus but not quite this bad.



The transcript in case you haven't figured it out:

Alan Permane: "Kimi, Get out of the fucking way!"
Kimi Räikkönen: ''Don't shout there fucker! I get out of the way when I have a chance, but not during fast corner''

The message was sent towards the end of the race as Grosjean was catching Raikkonen who was dealing with played out rubber.

Lotus apologized, possibly to to avoid a fine,  and put a cute polar bear picture on their Facebook page...

“With hindsight, this radio message could have been sent in a less emotional way. There was a lot of tension, a lot of potential technical problems, and some of the words that flew around were simply not appropriate.  Said Lotus team boss Eric Boullier  “I know that quite a few people were surprised and I can only apologize for that on behalf of the team. It won’t happen again.”

Passive aggressive again.
(via YouTube and WTF1)

Jim Clark's Lotus 25

Beautiful

Hot Gas Management

One of the few area free for engineers to tinker on F1 engines but one seldom discussed are exhausts.    Teams change configurations all the time looking for an edge, often to suit the circuit, none more so than Red Bull.  

Check out a package Red Bull brought to Silverstone.   Note the coated headers and the heat shield cladding over the whole engine.  This is likely all designed with an eye to keeping the internal aero workings of the car efficient and the exhaust plume as energized as possible.

Another development this week end is from Lotus who are finally deploying an reconfigured "double DRS",  a way to stall the rear wing  like the old "F-Duct" used to but without intervention from the driver (as mandated by regulations).

The air is collected in scoops next to the engine air inlet and then blown at low speed in the "monkey seat"  zone.  At high speed the flow is diverted to the periscope structure you see in the picture and up under the wing, making it stall.     As you can imagine tuning this system has to be a mighty challenge but Silverstone will be the perfect testing ground.

Three Laps In A 1967 Lotus 49.

Always loved the red steering wheel in pictures of Jim Clark's Lotus 49 and it still looks great in this clip from Road&Track.

You are riding, literally, on Alex Rossi's head as he drives the 1967 Chapman F1 creation around the Circuit of the Americas.

Notice how, over the three laps shown in the clip,  Rossi adapts to the car  which has little grip and is twitch under braking.

You can read more about this on the latest issue of the newly redesigned Road & Track magazine which might be on your news stand (I say might because all the ones around here seem to be sold out) or via iPad.

The article is also online HERE

Lotus F1 500 Race Special Edition Prints

Lotus F1 produced this cool limited edition print portfolio to celebrate the teams's 500th Grand Prix. Very cool that along with world champions Senna, Schumacher, Alonso and Raikkonen they chose to include Robert Kubica.

Have a look at our flickr if you'd like these on your garage wall!

A Coanda Quickie

At the  beginning of the year  we had identified for you "Coanda Effect" as one of the buzzwords of this 2012 season.

It's in the news again because both Mercedes and, in Korea, Lotus have deployed "Coanda Effect" exhausts and during the SpeedTV (The now ex-US racing channel) broadcast of Friday practice, Steve Matchett mentioned the famous video with the spoon and the faucet....



Of course since the Coanda effect has been used in aircraft wing design for the last hundred years or so, it is nothing new to Formula 1 but the reason it's "in the news" this year is because it is being used to cheat  get around regulations put in place to limit the effectiveness of  "blown" diffusers.

There were put in place for 2012, strict parameters for the shape, dimension and orientation of exhausts, all aimed at diverting the hot gas flow from the rear bottom of the car.   Teams have all followed the letter of the law with the pipe but  negated the intention of the rule with the bodywork which is used, exploiting the Coanda Effect, to bend hot exhaust flow to where it can energize the diffuser.

Now if there only was a good video illustrating how they are using air curtains to crate diffuser skirts...

KIMI'S WINNING

Ok fine, his car never got out of the garage during first practice but Raikkonen was winning with this James Hunt repro helmet today in Monaco.

A Lotus by any other name would smell as sweet?

When does a lotus stop being Lotus? Team Lotus F1 was never a Lotus at all, it was simply sponsored by the Malaysian company which used to own Group Lotus (as in Exiges and Evoras). Now that company, Proton, sold Lotus to another Malaysian car manufacturer so sponsorship to Team Lotus F1 has been dropped leaving Lotus, which used to be Renault, Benetton and Toleman before that, as...just a name?

A valuable one no doubt but after all the confusion of the past few seasons, is there any relevance in that name?
With Kimi Raikkonen on board and if they can sustain their early promising results, I would imagine "Lotus F1" is ripe for the picking by, my guess, a French concern with eyes towards the return of the French Grand Prix.
Since names can be just commodities, how about Matra?

The Down Shift.

Somehow Motor Trend's YouTube channel had totally escaped me. My bad because this one, 2011 Best Driver's car, is a lot of fun.

Loved the part where they stand next to different corners at Laguna Seca though I wish they had delivered on video their promise to see how the different cars behaved. Liked the insight into the thought process involved and having Justin Bell's pro driver perspective vs Jonny Lieberman's pro journalist one.

I think you can all figure out ahead of time who the winner turned out to be but still, well worth your time if like me you had missed it.

World's fastest Lotus

The sheer insanity of this car alone is worth your time watching the clip from DRIVE. That and the fact that, being a Lotus, will probably explode again tomorrow.

Formula One Still Blows.

Andrew Ferraro/LAT 

I have avoided commenting much about Formula 1 pre season testing, in my experience it's mostly pointless but racing starts next week and it's time to get back into it for Axis.

This year, while most commentary was centered on possibly the most inconsequential piece on the whole car, the step nose, a solution adopted by every team save for Mclaren (and Marussia which gets Mclaren leftover parts and ideas technical assistance) the real action has been at the back.

Diffusers directly energized by exhaust gasses on the off throttle via clever engine mapping are gone (or at least forbidden),  engine gasses now have to be discharged within a narrowly defined angle designed to do away with precisely what designers are in fact doing again, cheating the air and thumbing their noses at rule makers.

Want to limit us to an exhaust pipe that has to be visible from the top and round in section?  Fine, we'll build a fairing around the pipe with a viewing slot on the top.

Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Want to impose an angle meant to minimize the influence of the 400km/h exhaust stream on the aero performance? Fine, we'll use the rest of the car to produce airflow to bend that exhaust plume and redirect it to where we want it.

You want us not to have a double diffuser? Fine, we'll figure out a way to use the starter hole in the back for aero.

The question for many is, are you excited about a formula where aero is taken to such admittedly geekily exciting heights? Maybe.

Andrew Ferraro/LAT Photographic

Towards the end of testing, it looked like the "way to go" was to have the exhaust plume run between the inside of the wheel and the outside of the wing endplate. This to create and "air curtain" (hello BMW!) on the sides of the diffuser.

Ferrari had gone with that idea first but somehow could not make it work, perhaps because the exhaust was placed too far back. Sauber had the exhaust much further up and were copied by none other than Red Bull who then have added a further air channels in their sidepods to further divert the exhaust flow where Adrian Newey wants it.

When Ferrari changed their exhaust location further inboard the consequence was that the shape of the side pods, designed for the original placement, is not optimal for the new location. Ferrari is rumored to have requested a new side crash test from the FIA indicating a completely new side pod design involving the crash structure to be debuted after the fist Asian leg go the championship.  This year there is no "gentlemen's agreement" on spending so expect some radical moves by the top teams if they fall behind.

Glenn Dunbar/LAT Photographic

There has been much talk about this Ferrari crisis, I'm not so sure how much is real and how much is outlets who waste no opportunity, real or imagined, to dump on Ferrari.

The F2012 is the most "different" car, the Scuderia probably had to throw out all their setup books, they had to recalibrate the power steering, they have to figure out all the angles, takes time, something all teams are desperately short of.

Red Bull changed the aero but their suspension is essentially the same they have been running for the past two seasons, why change something that works so well?

Ker Robertson/Getty Images

The F2012 is said to be harder than others on tires, on the plus side that means it gets the Pirelli into temperature better than last year and that should help it on single laps in qualifying. We'll see next week.

But enough about Ferrari, How's that Red Bull going to hold up, steamroller or fast but fragile?

Lotus was fast, who knows if it was running at regulation weight but for sure Raikkonen looks to be better at comebacks than Schumacher was.

Mercedes might be at least on par with Ferrari, maybe faster. Rumors of more Brawn cleverness with blown wings are all about. Maybe schumi can finally win a race this season after which he can retire in peace. (leaving the way for Hamilton of course!.

Mclaren top team with Red Bull and Lotus? Bring it, I can't say it's been a long winter but I'm ready!

Check out our Flickr page for enormously sized desktops of F1 testing

Who said you can't use a Lotus Exige as a rally car?

Not me, I think all rally cars should be RWD only!

Someone also forgot to tell Stefano D'Aste too, which is good because we get this cool video of his considerable car control on your typical rock on one side, cliff on the other tarmac stage in Northern Italy.

(Videofotosport.com  hat tip: Master)

First F1 sounds of 2012: Kimi on track

First festival of sandbagging testing day in Jerez saw Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest time. Granted it's meaningless but his time shows the Kimster still has it in him to burn Pirelli rubber as well as everyone else in the field and that can only be good news.

Red Bull had the highest top speed and people are still talking about that nose slit which nobody quite believes is just for "driver cooling" like Newey has claimed.

1 - Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus E20-Renault) - 1'19"670 - 75 laps
2 - Paul Di Resta (Force India VJM05-Mercedes) - 1'19"772 - 101
3 - Nico Rosberg (Mercedes MGP-W02) - 1'20"219 - 56
4 - Mark Webber (Red Bull RB8-Renault) - 1'20"496 - 54
5 - Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso STR7-Ferrari) - 1'20"694 - 57
6 - Michael Schumacher (Mercedes MGP-W02) - 1'20"794 - 42
7 - Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber C31-Ferrari) - 1'21"353 - 106
8 - Jenson Button (McLaren MP4/27-Mercedes) - 1'21"530 - 62
9 - Felipe Massa (Ferrari F2012) - 1'22"815 - 69
10 - Heikki Kovalainen - (Caterham CT01-Renault) - 1'23"178 - 28
11 - Pastor Maldonado (Williams FW34-Cosworth) - 1'23"371 - 25
12 - Pedro De La Rosa (HRT F111-Cosworth) - 1'23"676 - 44

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Lotus launches, motoring press groans.

There was a time when the motoring press were invited to lavish launches of new Formula One cars and showered with swag and free food. Then the economy took a turn and some teams went on a "look at me, I'm saving money". bender.

This year, only Mclaren did the traditional big launch, inviting the paddock-passerati to Woking to show off their mothership, their 2012 fighter and their bitching catering business.

Ferrari was planning on feeding tortellini to all but a freak snowstorm forced them to cancel and just release pictures and information online. Nobody noticed the difference, except those expecting a prancing horse tote bag.

Now, granted, a trip to Enstone in January, may or may not be an exciting proposition, but Lotus just dropped all pretense and produced a pretty cool, internet ready package, eliminating the traditional press outright.

The clip starts out with the YouTube's own Formula One Guitar sensation and then moves with a 5thGear presenter and with tweet friendly pit lane reporter Will Buxton, through a 20 minute infomercial. Too long? probably but you get all you care to know about the new E20.

E20 because it's definitively not a Renault, it's a Lotus now after being Renault, Benetton and Toleman, ah tradition!.
The E20 is not looking as radical as last year's car, with a "low step" nose and push rod front suspension.

Lotus will be on track this week at Jerez along with all other teams except for Caterham Marussia.

(tx Timur for the clip!).

Senna in the new Lotus Exige S

Looks nice, now if they solved the pesky break down/catch on fire issue, they might be on to something.

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Jetalliance Lotus Evora GT, 2011 Petit Le Mans practice, Road Atlanta by James Boone.

Awkward...

Nick Heidfeld showed up at Spa in full Renault F1 regalia giving interviews left and right. The German is suing Lotus Renault after being kicked out of his seat in favor of a well funded Bruno Senna and in advance of a court hearing in two weeks, Heidfeld wanted to make sure he fulfilled the terms of his contract to a t. I imagine if both Bruno and he showed up at a sponsor event? ....aaaaawkward.

One has to believe there is more behind this story than is out right now. Lotus must be desperate for money, otherwise why keep the driver with less championship points? Petrov comes very well funded of course while Little Nick was getting a hefty salary.
Then again who knows, maybe Heidfeld is unbearable.... in any case, I'm sure Nick stroked his beard when he saw this...



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