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Lotus Racing are now back in the middle-east
for the last race of the 2010 season, the Abu
Dhabi Grand Prix. The team is in buoyant mood
after another solid performance in Sao Paulo saw
them tighten their grip on tenth place in the
Championship, moving ever closer to achieving
their primary goal in their debut season.
The Lotus Racing story is nothing short of
spectacular. The team has already won an army of
fans worldwide, gained huge respect within the
notoriously tough F1 paddock and in the wider
commercial world, and gone from a workforce of
just four in September 2009 to over 200 now, all
focused on taking a major step forward in 2011
to take on and beat the established teams ahead.
Fairuz Fauzy (driving in place of Heikki
Kovalainen in FP1): “I’m looking forward to
getting back in the car and I think it will be a
very special atmosphere, on track and in the
garage. The twilight running obviously makes the
race very interesting, but as I’ll be going out
in FP1 the real challenge for me is to try and
push on what will be a very green track. I’ve
spent a bit of time in a simulator to prepare
for the run on Friday, but it will obviously be
different when I get out on the real thing.”
Heikki Kovalainen: “Abu Dhabi is a great track
and I like the fact we race in the fading light.
I think it will be a good fight up at the front,
and for us it’s the end of a very long, but so
far very rewarding season. Everyone in the team
has done really well all year, pushing us along
to where we are now, and this weekend is all
about maintaining concentration and giving it
one final effort before we start focusing
entirely on next year. I’m excited about the
race and I think we’ll be in good shape to keep
up the pressure on the guys around us.”
Jarno Trulli: “It’s the last race but for me
it’s still all about getting my car across the
finish line with Heikki so we can tie up tenth
place. The track isn’t a huge challenge – it’s
not as rewarding to drive on as somewhere like
Brazil, but we’ll be ok there as our car should
be pretty much as far ahead of those around us
as we have been in the last few races.”
Mike Gascoyne: “Down to the last race and I
don’t think we could be going there in any
better shape. Abu Dhabi should be another track
where we can take the fight to our nearest
rivals, and all season long we have seen that
the investment in experience throughout the
whole team has held us in very good stead in our
first season. You could see in Brazil that both
Heikki and Jarno were able to pull away from
Timo throughout the race, and that is down to
excellent work all year by the team at the track
and the factory, and in the two cockpits, and we
are aiming for that to be repeated at the last
race. The goal is obviously to finish tenth, and
we would like to do that in the same style we
have shown all season - by beating those around
us, so everyone will be putting in one last big
effort to repay the faith shown in us by our
fans all year and everyone who has helped us
reach this point of the season.”
Tony Fernandes: “As we approach the Abu Dhabi
Grand Prix I feel a great sense of
accomplishment and delivery. In just one year we
have delivered a team that has presented itself
and behaved like one that has been racing for a
long time. We made the bold decision to bring in
two experienced drivers who have helped us push
our way up as quickly as possible, on and off
track, and from the earliest days of our team we
have respected the heritage of Colin Chapman and
his family and treated them both with the honour
and style they deserve. It will be an incredible
feeling to see the culmination of our first
season back at another track where the Lotus
Racing dream took shape. We came to the 2009
race, and while I hoped then that we would be
where we are now, I could not have predicted we
would have come quite as far as we have. Our
future is extremely exciting. We have everything
in place to take a big step forward next year,
and I truly believe we have already exceeded our
own expectations in our first season. For a team
that had only five months to build our first car,
as well as an entire race team and factory, we
can hold up our heads up high to our fans, the
Chapman family, the paddock fraternity and most
importantly, to ourselves. There has been a huge
amount of discussion about Lotus re-entering
Formula One for the first time since 1994, but
we spent this year looking ahead and not
engaging in the talk about bringing the Lotus
brand back. We went about our business in our
own unassuming way, letting our actions speak
louder than our words, and we will continue to
do just that. We have a unique style and will
always stay true to that as we move forward, up
to the ultimate position of one day being World
Champions."
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