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[darwin dali]

Lotus - the former Renault team - will continue to receive the French carmaker's backing in 2012.

The Renault chassis name has now departed the grid, but Renault remains one of F1's few engine suppliers.

While the French marque's focus is the championship-winning Red Bull team, the word 'Renault' remains prominent on Lotus' new black and gold E20 car livery.

Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport, however, said the Enstone based team is now paying for its 2.4 litre V8 power.

"But only 70 per cent," said Renault's Jean-Francois Caubet, "because we remain sponsors of the team from Enstone. We also have a technical collaboration that relates to KERS and the turbo V6 engine that will come in 2014."

[racechick]

Sounds like Renault (or Lotus if you like) have chassis problems. Wonder what thats all about?

[LewEngBridewell]

Well, the LOTUS team have pulled out of this week's test fully now. With immediate effect. I bet they'll be p!ssed off, seeing how well the first week in Jerez went. Here's an article from autosport.

Lotus has pulled out of the Barcelona test with immediate effect as a result of the problems it encountered with its chassis this morning.

The team has decided to abandon running in order to fully understand the problem with the chassis that manifested itself on chassis 2, which ran for the first time today.

This is despite chassis 1 completing the full Jerez test two weeks ago. The team said the problem requires modification to both chassis.

The car completed 1788 km of testing at Jerez, but the problem manifested itself at the higher-speed Barcelona configuration.

"Before we were due to fly chassis E20-01 out to Barcelona in replacement of chassis E20-02 - damaged this morning - we ran a series of simulations at the factory based on the data provided by our brief running on track today," said technical director James Allison.

"As a result, we were able to identify an area which requires some additional work. It will be more productive for us to carry out these modifications to both chassis at Enstone rather than send E20-01 out to this week's test. We'll put the right measures in place and we will be able to fix the problem before next week."

Team boss Eric Boullier added: "Not running this week has been a tough decision to take, but we feel that our choice is the right one. On the positive side, we have quickly identified the issue with the chassis and our design office has already devised a solution. We will be present at next week's test in Barcelona.

"We draw faith from the fact that the E20 was quick out of the box in Jerez and showed its reliability there. We have a lot of work ahead of us over the next week but everyone at Enstone is ready for this challenge."

[scotty]

Heard they discovered a fundamental design flaw? What the hell could that be that they didn't notice in Jerez?! That really is bad.

[racechick]

Hmmmm Lets hope Renault's problems arent too big. It would be a shame after such a good showing. But it doesnt sound too good.

[LewEngBridewell]

Hmmmm Lets hope Renault's problems arent too big. It would be a shame after such a good showing. But it doesnt sound too good.

I think the problems lie with Lotus, not Renault.

[racechick]

Hmmmm Lets hope Renault's problems arent too big. It would be a shame after such a good showing. But it doesnt sound too good.

I think the problems lie with Lotus, not Renault.

Yeah, but thats Renault

[racechick]

It seems the problem could be an engine mount problem
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97620


Here are Lotus literally pulling out of the test. But the bit I found interesting was the bit at the end that said Kimi wasnt scheduled to take part in any days of the test.Strange
http://notepad.badgergp.com/lotus-withd ... na-testing

[andrew]

Hmmmm Lets hope Renault's problems arent too big. It would be a shame after such a good showing. But it doesnt sound too good.

I think the problems lie with Lotus, not Renault.

Yeah, but thats Renault

No, it's Lotus. The 2 are seperate entities now. The are now the same as every other team (except Ferrari and Mercedes) and buy their engines from a seperate company.

[bud]

Do RedBull get the engines for free now? I thought they announced a works deal of sorts with Renault? McLaren won't be paying until next season pretty sure 2012 is the last season of their old now defunct works contract.

[Hammer278]

Bet the fundamental problem is the fact that the can holder in Kimi's cockpit broke off its hinges.

[LewEngBridewell]

Bet the fundamental problem is the fact that the can holder in Kimi's cockpit broke off its hinges.

Either that or the three-truck's-worth of Magnums didn't turn up

[geetface9]

Hmmmm Lets hope Renault's problems arent too big. It would be a shame after such a good showing. But it doesnt sound too good.

I think the problems lie with Lotus, not Renault.

Yeah, but thats Renault

I see what you two did there

[CHR1S UK]

I heard that the issue could be linked to the removal of the Active Ride Height system. The car was designed around it and when the car was been developed it there would of been a lot less stress through the car.
Obviously the car only ran in Jerez without the system but there would of been less stress on the car in Jerez as it's less damanding

[CHR1S UK]

Do RedBull get the engines for free now? I thought they announced a works deal of sorts with Renault? McLaren won't be paying until next season pretty sure 2012 is the last season of their old now defunct works contract.

From what I understand there is no works Renault team. Redbull pay for their engine similar deal to Lotus as they also are contributing towards development of the V6 Turbo