The Lotus Formula One team have finally confirmed that their brand new challenger for the 2012 season will be called the E20, a name designed to recognise the significance of the 20th car to come from their Enstone base in the UK.
The new car, which will be unveiled on February 5th when the team takes the wraps off their new Lotus F1 Team website, will be known as the E20, the team confirmed on Friday.
The car is the 20th to emerge from their long-time Enstone base, with the team having moved there during their Benetton days in 1992.
Team boss Eric Boullier said that the new name was designed to recognise the "contribution" of the team's base, and was not at all because they couldn't think of anything better to call it.
"Our naming of the chassis to recognise Enstone's importance to the team's evolution highlights our recognition of the contribution of the facility and the personnel who work tirelessly every year to produce the very best car possible," he parped.
"We certainly hope that this is the case with the E20 and we are looking forward to revealing the car to the world and seeing it out on track for the first time."
He went on: "There are a number of technical changes from last year and we have an exciting new driver line-up to extract the maximum from the E20 through the twenty Grands Prix of the 2012 season, including the 500th race for this team through its different incarnations.
"We hope that the E20 proves to be a performing Enstone design."
The car's new name finally sees the team depart from the old 'R' prefix used on their chassis as a hangover from the team's time as the Renault factory squad.
Although Renault sold the team at the end of the 2009 season, they have continued to run as Renault for the last two years.
But for 2011 the team has finally secured a name change to Lotus, after the Lotus/Lotus naming spat with Tony Fernandes's backmarking team was finally cleared up.
The new Lotus squad are hoping that the E20 can deliver a step forward for new drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean, though the design suffered a setback this month when the FIA banned the team's pioneering 'reactive ride height' system.
Renault finished 5th in the constructors championship in 2011, slipping back down the order after taking two podium places in the first two races of the season.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|





