"We hear that the two Lotus parties have now reached an agreement and next season Team Lotus will become Team Caterham AirAsia..." Speculation from Joe Saward's blog on 2011 August 26. He is typically not far off the mark.
The main sticking point of Tony Fernandes was that Lotus Lada Renault should pay for his rebranding and loss of investment in things like team apparel and merchandising. That seems to have been resolved.
Team Caterham? It will never have the same ring as Team Lotus that carries so much panache with it. Frankly, I couldn't see the point of Tony Fernandes buying Caterham just to re-brand his F1 team. Team Air Asia at least would have made sense, advertising his airline (like Virgin, eh?).
Caterham has closer ties to Motorsport and has been making better cars than Lotus for years. This is awesome news, especially for Caterham owners! Image Unavailable, Please Login
At grassroot levels, you are right. But in any other sense, Caterham is completely unknown in international racing, compared to Lotus that went on to take so many championships in F1, Indy, F2, etc... Think about Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Jochen Rindt, Emerson Fittipaldi, Mario Andretti, Ayrton Senna and Lotus is associated with their succes. Caterham has no aura compared to that...
I think Tony bought Caterham to compete with Proton in the local market. Frankly, I hope he destroYs them.
Nobody could disagree that Lotus has a fantastic history and heritage, but most of it dates back to when Chapman was driving incredible innovation there. I'm no expert, but I don't really see anything like that anymore- the latest cars they showed seems like bad jokes and demonstrated just how out of touch they were with their own history and their potential market. Maybe under new leadership and an relatively new name, the team can make something happen. And Caterham isn't completely unknown in F1 circles- you'd be amazed at how many F1 drivers own or have owned Caterham Sevens.
Actually, the article indicates the name "Team Caterham AirAsia", thus advertising two of his brands in the name.
Unfortunately, with that leadership being that of Eric Boullier of Team Renault and Dany Bahar of Proton-Group Lotus, Renault/Group Lotus will continue to slide backwards. Boullier has done nothing but reverse the team, he's losing their most talented engineering staff at a prodigious rate, and Bahar's grand plans for Lotus involve moving the company waaay up-market to compete beyond Porsche, against Ferrari, and his strategy is to hire second rate hip hop artists as design directors! I suspect Fernandes' long game is to lose the battle (current rights to Lotus name in F1), but to win the war - Bahar will inevitable ruin the company within another 2 years, and Proton and the Malaysian gov't will be so embarrassed by the mess they created after putting Bahar in charge that they will want to wash their hands of the company... and Fernandes will be first in line to pick up the pieces and take over Lotus in its entirety. I wouldn't doubt if that contingency was part of his contract in this current deal!
Just to clarify, in this quote I meant the Team Caterham Air Asia F1 team, not the mess at Lotus- that looks hopeless.
