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F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen visits the home of
Lotus Cars to meet the Lotus family and choose
the scheme for his personalised Lotus Evora.
It was a real thrill for the Lotus workforce to
see Lotus F1 Racing Driver Heikki as he was
given a personal tour of the production
facilities yesterday, and even more exciting for
those few employees who got a rare chance to be
driven by the F1 star as he tested the Lotus
Evora on Lotus’ own test track for the first
time.
During his day with Lotus Cars Heikki was given
a special tour of the Classic Team Lotus
workshops by Clive Chapman, son of Lotus founder
Colin Chapman during which he chatted to Clive
and Engineer Bob Dance about their first hand
experience of some of the most successful and
iconic F1 racing cars of all time. The tour was
steeped in Lotus history and included some of
the F1 cars that helped Lotus to achieve 79 GP
wins, seven constructor’s titles and 6 drivers’
championships, including Emerson Fittipaldi’s
Type 72.
Dany Bahar, CEO of Group Lotus plc said, “Group
Lotus is very proud of its racing pedigree and
we are all very excited to share our story with
Heikki. It was our honour to welcome Heikki to
Group Lotus and we wish him and the Lotus F1
Racing team every success for the 2010 F1 season.”
Dany Bahar continued, “We take great pride in
the sports cars that we produce at Hethel and
Heikki’s visit provided a great opportunity to
show off the multi-award winning cars that we
produce and the advanced niche production
facilities at Hethel.”
Heikki was not on Lotus soil long before he was
behind the wheel of the Lotus Evora trying it on
for size on Lotus’ own test track and commented
“The Evora was everything I expected, Lotus is
famous for fantastic sports cars and the Evora
did not disappoint. The power to weight ratio
gives the car a real racecar feel and allowed me
to really push the car round the track. I
enjoyed every lap and had fun sliding it
sideways!”
He went on to say, “The day has been great, I
was really excited to see so many happy,
motivated people and the support of the Lotus
workforce is very much appreciated, I really got
a sense of the passion the people have for the
Lotus brand.”
Heikki concluded, “I’d really like to thank
every one at Lotus for a great day, it was an
honour to meet Clive Chapman and learn more abut
his legendary father and to see Lotus’ classic
F1 cars. I’m really keen to drive one of the JPS
cars and maybe will be at Lotus again sometime
soon to drive the Type 72!”
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