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Lotus Racing was among the first Formula One™
teams to make it safely back to their UK base
after landing late last night at London Stansted,
Team Principal Tony Fernandes’ Air Asia having
come to the team’s rescue and flying them all
back from Kuala Lumpur at lunchtime on Wednesday.
Having already helped the entire team escape the
masses trying to leave Shanghai on Monday night,
Tony and his Air Asia team performed miracles to
ensure all 55 members of the team, as well as
key figures from Cosworth and a number of F1™
journalists and photographers, first made it
safely to Malaysia, Air Asia’s home country, to
be ready to jump on the first flight to the UK
when the airspace finally reopened. At the same
time, the team’s freight has also been winging
its way to England, and is now en route to Lotus
Racing’s Norfolk factory, where it will all be
unpacked and inspected before the focus turns to
the upgrade packages being applied to the cars
for Barcelona.
Talking about the efforts made to get the team
home was Tony Fernandes, uniquely placed in F1™
as both a Team Principal and Group CEO of Air
Asia, the only airline flying directly from
South East Asia into Stansted: “I’m delighted
everyone’s made it back to Norfolk safe and
sound. The Air Asia team in KL worked extremely
hard to ensure we could get everyone on the
first flight out, and with the extremely tight
timelines they’re working to between now and the
departure dates for Barcelona, it was vital we
could get them all home as soon as possible. We
were fully prepared for the journey back, and
when I gave the team a tour of the Air Asia
Academy at Sepang on Tuesday, I showed them the
simulators where our pilots had been through
rigorous training for flying through volcanic
ash. Tough times often produce amazing results,
and the team has bonded even more closely
through these trying times, both internally and
with the Air Asia team who helped them out. They
knew they were in safe hands and it’s great we
could get them back ahead of most of the grid!”
Mike Gascoyne, Chief Technical Officer, was back
in the office early on Thursday after the 14
hour flight back from KL landed just before
midnight, and was going through the plans for
unpacking the freight and turning round the cars
in time for the departure to Barcelona: “Firstly
I want to say thanks, on behalf of the whole
team, to Tony and Air Asia for literally taking
us under their wings and getting us home so
quickly. With their help, we’ve faced minimal
disruption to our travel plans, and have
minimised the impact it could have had on our
ability to work to our pre-Barcelona timetable,
and it was a great effort from everyone in
Malaysia to help us out. We will go through our
normal proceedures to unpack all the freight
that’s arrived from China, and will then turn
our attention to applying the Barcelona update
package to both cars. All in all, we’re just
glad to be home and able to focus on our jobs
again, rather than worrying about the forces of
nature!”
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