Patronise F1

What a difference a couple of years seems to make. Amidst all the backslapping hullabaloo of the Lotus team's unnecessarily extensive launch video for their new E20 machine, one thing seemed to stand out above everything else. Not the platypus nose of the car, which is just becoming a depressing reality of these 2012 launches already, but the sight of Kimi Raikkonen looking relaxed and cheery. On more than one occasion, he was actually smiling. Smiling.

This was far from the Kimi Raikkonen of 2009, as he shuffled off the grid at the end of his most disappointing season in the sport to date on an unofficial sabbatical. Gone was the sullen stare, the unhappy muttering and the general aura of a man who couldn't give a solitary one about the sport, the team or anything else, replaced by a chipper and carefree Kimi who very much looked ready for action.

Obviously even this team's shoddy PR team (which in the last 12 months managed to turn a simple mid-season driver change into an awkward threat of legal action, and then pissed off the long-injured Robert Kubica with a hasty press release counting him out of 2012 altogether) should be able to get their drivers to look interested for a sponsor-pleasing launch video, but nevertheless, the sight of Raikkonen looking like that is a positive thing for his fans at the start of a crucial comeback campaign.

Ever since he confirmed that he was bored of trying to find a new life beyond Formula One back in November, and confirmed a shock comeback with the Lotus squad, there has been precisely zero pieces of concrete evidence to use in order to try and extrapolate how well - or badly - F1's prodigal son will go in 2012. Aside from a two-day acclimatisation test in a two year old car, from which no times were released, Raikkonen and Lotus have been in winter shutdown mode. We're still over 36 hours away from actually seeing him in the new car.

So, with no evidence to work with, the 'Kimi Raikkonen - good or bad?' debate has had to fall back on semantics. Namely, the idea that Raikkonen is arguably the most naturally-gifted F1 driver of the last ten years, versus the suggestion that towards the end of his last stint in the sport he was a demotivated and largely useless mess, who spent a year and a half at Ferrari struggling to outperform Felipe Massa.

Raikkonen himself seems to be genuinely bored of the question of whether he is motivated enough to return to the sport. "There's always talk about my motivation, written by people who don't know me and couldn't have an idea on how strong my motivation is," he said on Sunday, "If I didn't feel I had the motivation, I would stop." If there is a hint of exasperation in his words, it is because - as he points out - why would he bother coming back to the sport if he hated it. It's not like he really needs the money.

So while his assertion that "I probably drove some of my best races in my last season in Formula 1 and I was very happy with my performance. I've never had any issues with motivation," might be pushing things slightly too far over into implausible, the words from his mouth are thusfar matching his actions. Smiley happy Kimi is brimming over with motivation, eager to pitch himself into the gaggle of drivers chasing down Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull, and perhaps rekindle his reputation that suffered badly over his final few months in the sport.

Questions of motivation over then. No, seriously, it will never be mentioned again. Honest. But now the attention will turn to the E20 itself, a car whose name calls back to the proud 20 year car-making history of the team's Enstone HQ, which has been responsible for four title-winning cars, but also a fair amount of dross. So the big question to be unravelled between now and Melbourne is whether the special anniversary edition prove to be more of a Renault R25 or a Benetton B201.

Right now, there doesn't appear to be anything too striking about Lotus's new challenger, apart from the fact that a combination of a gentler 'step' and a sympathetic colour scheme means that their platypus nose oesn't look half as bad as some of the honkers that have already been unveiled. Black and gold, it would seem, is an attractive outfit to take attention away from your physical deficiencies.

But then, the team might be forgiven for being a little more circumspect with the design of their new car. In 2011 they tried to go radical, and provoked more raised eyebrows than finals day at a Roger Moore lookalike contest with their exciting-looking front-exiting exhaust solution. Alas, as the season wore on, the design proved unwieldy and unconvincing, and after a couple of early podiums for Nick Heidfeld and Vitaly Petrov, the team's pace dwindled.

Some have questioned the abilities of the new car based on the FIA's decision to ban their nifty new ride height system just weeks before the start of the season, but then other reports have suggested that this new box of tricks was something of a red herring, the team having decided before the ban to dispense with the whole plan of controlling the car's ride height using the braking systems after initial tests proved that it id not really produce a significant improvement in performance.

So instead, with the exhaust system dropped thanks to the ban on blown diffusers and the ride height system scrapped before it was even properly introduced, the team might be opting to play it safe with their first car for Kimi. They certainly don't seem to be grasping for a quick fix if Gerard Lopez's recent comments are anything to go by. "Our efforts are concerted behind our objective to be a contender once more for the 2015-16 championships," he bellowed, giving the team a full 3-4 years to sort everything out.

So for Lotus, their first season as the proper bona-fide single Lotus F1 brand looks like it is being viewed as the first step towards a stronger future. Compared to last year they have certainly made improvements on the driver front, but the acid test will be whether they have done the same with the car. Raikkonen, and the team themselves, probably aren't expecting a title challenge this year, but as part of a long-term strategy the Enstone squad need to show early signs of improvement.

Anything other than that and the motivation of not just Raikkonen, but the whole team, might be back up for debate.

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