The Lotus Racing Formula One team have confirmed that they have signed up their chief technical director Mike Gascoyne for another five seasons, keeping him with the rookie team at least until the end of the 2015 championship season.
Gascoyne has a long history of achieving limited success with teams throughout the F1 grid, including Jordan, Benetton and Toyota before leaving the job to be average elsewhere.
But Lotus seem happy with his work so far, with the T127 proving to be the best of the three rookie cars on the grid in 2010, even if it looks as aerodynamic as a breeze block.
Lotus Racing confirmed the long-term deal for Gascoyne on Wednesday morning, and will extend his current deal out by a further five championship seasons.
"Mike's five-year deal is a major announcement for the whole Lotus Racing team," the Lotus team boss Tony Fernandes beamed, being careful not to call the team 'Team Lotus' in the process.
He went on: "It shows just how serious we are, not only about how far ahead we are setting our aspirations, but also as a reward to Mike for the incredibly hard work he and the team have already put in to get us from literally four people back in September '09 to our current position as a serious F1 player with a very bright future ahead of us.
"On a personal level, I've really enjoyed the last year that we've been working together, and I'm very excited about working with Mike for many years to come."
Gascoyne said that he has always felt as if he wanted to finish his working career with the Lotus team, and said that it was "great" to have been given a longer deal.
"Having started the team from scratch with Tony it was always my intention to finish my career here, so it's great to have formally agreed a five year deal," he grinned.
"I'd like to extend my sincere thanks to Tony, Din, Nasa, Riad and the whole team, and I'm extremely grateful to everyone involved in Lotus Racing for having the confidence to take this into a long-term contract."
He added: "We've had a great start to our partnership together, and I'm looking forward to continuing that for the next five years, and even beyond that."
Lotus currently sit tenth in the 2010 constructors championship, ahead of their fellow rookie outfits at Virgin and HRT, though they are yet to score a championship point.
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