Could Lotus ever get back into F1?

[Bill]

I miss the Lotus cars in F1. I know the cost is very high today, but why not?

- Bill

[Esprit2]

Anything can happen. It's only money, and Lotus is rolling in it.
:-\

More significantly, Lotus got into F1 originally because it was Chapman's personal passion. Lotus Cars more or less existed to fuel his habit. And at the time, F1 was a small enough enterprise that fielding a team could be a gentleman's pursuit. Now it's mega-business, mega-budget, mega-mega.

Without a highly-motivated leader at the top who thinks it's a good idea, and with professional holding companies expecting a return on their investment, it's not very likely that Lotus leadership will ever again have the latitude to turn the company upside down in support of an F1 team.

I too dearly miss Team Lotus and the glory days, and I would love to see Lotus return to the fray. But that's passion, not logic, and I'm not holding my breath waiting for their return.

[Martin]

Then again, would we really want to see Lotus back in Formula 1 if they are not in the top 5 teams? I know I wouldn't want Lotus to be the Spyker-Ferrari competitor.

[slipstream]

The Lotus company that had F1 teams, and earlier factory sponsored sports and F2 and Formula Jr race teams no longer exists.

Lotus Cars is strictly an auto manufacturer and engineering company/contractor. Even at that, Lotus Engineering has been restructured to be a completely self contained company...cynics might think it's been configured to be sold as a discrete unit.

Team Lotus is owned by David Hunt, son of James Hunt. He has rights to the Lotus name as it would apply to F1, and as others have said the cost to get a team up and running, let alone competitve would be prohibitive for him. Team Lotus is really just a name, with little/no assets.

The old classic/race cars do not belong to Team Lotus. Classic Team Lotus is yet another company, still owned by the Chapman family, that owns, maintains, shows, and vintage races many of the old race cars.

Some of the old race cars are in the Barber museum in the US.

'Lotus' as it existed when it fielded (even uncompetitive) race team no longer exists, and it's doubtful Proton would try to buy Hunt's interest in the Lotus race team, and equally doubtful VW or whoever winds up owning Proton would either.

[WheelSpin]

Even if they got into some decent GT stuff like ALMS or something would be great. There isn't anywhere state side you can go to race and cheer on Lotus, what's up with that?

[Brian Skeoch]

you never know what can happen...

[Kimbers]

Lotus won the UK GT3 Championship this year and race in many different areas. They even have their own race series (though it's not run by the factory) LOTR (Lotus on Track Racing).

I'm sure lotus would be happy to build cars for a US race series if a team wanted them. I know that MJK's personal ambition was to race the Esprits in SCCA, which they did very successfully with Paul Newman, Doc Bundy and one of the Carradines.

[Martin]

Brian help me on this one: there is a team called Hypersport which is infact going to run an Exige S next year in ALMS. But I don't know what kind of factory support they are getting.