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By Hammer278
#420235
Lotus has just switched to Mercedes power from 2015 - official.
By What's Burning?
#420244
So it's Ferrari with three teams and Renault with three teams. Maybe just two since Caterham will likely not return given their current financial straights. And Honda has a sole customer in McLaren. Did I miss anyone?
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By darwin dali
#420265
So it's Ferrari with three teams and Renault with three teams. Maybe just two since Caterham will likely not return given their current financial straights. And Honda has a sole customer in McLaren. Did I miss anyone?

Mercedes? :wink:
By What's Burning?
#420272
So it's Ferrari with three teams and Renault with three teams. Maybe just two since Caterham will likely not return given their current financial straights. And Honda has a sole customer in McLaren. Did I miss anyone?

Mercedes? :wink:

:rofl:
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By Frontrunner
#420290
This should give Lotus a bit of a gain next year.
By Hammer278
#420294
I'd be interested to see the price tag for the Merc powerplant in relation to others for 2015...and how they compare to 2014. I understand the Merc is the cheapest with Renault being top dollar.

Just out of interest's sake...how much this year's showing allows for the engine makers to twist their client's wallets around.
By LRW
#420298
I'd be interested to see the price tag for the Merc powerplant in relation to others for 2015...and how they compare to 2014. I understand the Merc is the cheapest with Renault being top dollar.

Just out of interest's sake...how much this year's showing allows for the engine makers to twist their client's wallets around.


Thats an interesting question - I suppose it depends on how long the engine deals last - for some teams its mutiple years isnt it (McLaren for example)? - and I guess the price of the engine is agreed upfront for the period of the contract - and therefore the price is agreed. I suppose they could have a clause stipulating the price will rise 'X'% after year 1, dependant upon success. But then how do you quantify the success of an engine, as its so integrated into the car. Again, look at McLaren this year, they have the Merc engine, but on the face of it results have been poor.

Anyway that was a ramble. But its interesting Hammer (the question not my rambling).
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By Jabberwocky
#430603
FIA saying they are still waiting for confirmation on Lotus being in F1 next year.

Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk
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By LewEngBridewell
#430606
FIA saying they are still waiting for confirmation on Lotus being in F1 next year.

Sent from my SM-N910F using Tapatalk


Pffffft this team situation (generally) is pretty grim :shock:
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By sagi58
#431036
 wrote:">F1: Permane admits tech staff exits caused Lotus woe

The loss of key technical staff in 2013 was the main reason why Lotus's '14 Formula 1 campaign was so bad, believes trackside operations chief Alan Permane.

Technical director James Allison left Lotus for Ferrari before last season, with head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer following him and other staff also departing. Lotus went from being a grand prix winner in 2013 to struggling to get out of Q1 at times last year, scoring only three times and plunging from fourth to eighth in the constructors' championship.

"We had a fairly torrid winter last winter and we lost quite a lot of people, and the aero department was heavily restructured," Permane admitted. "With all respect to [new technical director] Nick [Chester], James was an absolute team leader.

"Losing James was a big hit. We lost Dirk, our head of aerodynamics. We lost our head of CFD. These are all good people. No one can't be replaced, but it takes time when you get replacements in for them to start gelling.

"The previous aero department had worked together for five or six years and were churning out really good stuff. To stop that abruptly upsets things. But we have a great wind tunnel and a great base at Enstone. There's no reason why we won't get back on the right path again."

Problems couldn't be fixed in 2014

Permane said Lotus soon realised where its E22 was flawed, but the problems could not be fully fixed until the 2015 design.

"There are three or four things that make cars quick, and one of them is aero – and it's not strong enough [on the 2014 car], it really isn't," he said. "But we're pretty sure we know where it isn't, and it wasn't something that could be changed on that car.

"We have changed it on next year's [2015] car and we can already see very significant gains in the wind tunnel. So we're very confident.

"While we're not going to say we're going to go out and beat Mercedes and Red Bull – those teams that are employing almost double the people we're employing – we're very confident that we'll be regularly back into Q3 and fighting for podiums again."

He also believes Lotus managed to learn from its 2014 troubles.

"We've learned a lot. We didn't have a great year when we did our side exhaust [in 2011], but we learned a lot about exhaust blowing and that helped us in the following years," Permane said. "There's no doubt that in the last three or four races the car markedly improved.

"It didn't really improve position-wise because we had such a big gap. But if you look at the percentages from pole position, we closed things up."
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