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Lotus drops Renault for Mercedes F1 engines

With only three manufacturers supplying engines in Formula One this season, the teams have been fairly evenly split: Ferrari, Sauber and Marussia use Ferrari engines; Mercedes, McLaren, Williams and Force India run on Mercedes power; Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Lotus and Caterham employ Renault power units. But one important team is reportedly preparing to ditch Renault and switch to Mercedes for next year.
That team is Lotus, an outfit which has fallen off its pace the past few seasons but which has still been a vital partner for Renault. That's because until a few seasons ago, the team based in Enstone, UK, was owned by Renault and bore the company's name. The operation was founded in 1981 as Toleman, was rechristened Benetton in 1986, bought by Renault 2000, taking the company's name in 2002, sold to its current owners Genii Capital 2009 and adopting the black and gold Lotus livery in 2011. As Benetton, it ran Ford engines until switching to Renault in 1995, sticking with the French outfit ever since, but that decades-long partnership - which meandered through Renault ownership and back out again - is now apparently drawing to a close.
The departure of Lotus as a customer team ought to allow Renault to focus instead on its increasing ties with Red Bull, which has taken the Enstone team's place as Renault's principal team. It could prove a smart move for the Lotus team as well, as the Mercedes engines have been outperforming the Renault units this season by an order of magnitude: not only is Mercedes far outpacing Red Bull at the top of the standings, but each of Mercedes' customer teams is performing better than Renault's clients.

Lotus adds lightness to new Exige S Club Racer

If there are two things Lotus is good at, they're trimming weight off already lightweight cars and getting the most out of its existing products. And those are just the talents it's called on to roll out the new Exige S Club Racer. Based on the Exige that's been on the market since 2000 – itself based on the Elise that dates back to 1996 – the new Exige S Club Racer manages to cut an extra 33 pounds off the vehicle's already featherlike curb weight, now down to under 2,600 lbs. The weight reduction comes down largely to the lightweight battery, center console, doors and sports seats. Yet measured at 100 miles per hour, the coupe also produces 93 lbs of extra downforce thanks to the revised aero package that includes a new front splitter, rear wing and flat underbody. Joining the Elise 20th Anniversary Edition (which itself replaces the Elise S Club Racer), the new Lotus Exige S Club Racer packs a 3.5-liter V6 to run to 62 in four seconds flat and on to a top speed of 170 mph. That's some rather impressive performance for a vehicle that only costs GBP56,900 in the UK, which is about what you'd pay for a Porsche Cayman GTS over there that would cost us around $75k. Unfortunately, Lotus doesn't sell the Exige in the US anymore, so this is one further improvement on a model we'll just have to admire from across the ocean. NEW LOTUS EXIGE S CLUB RACER - FASTER AND LIGHTER - Club Racer ethos applied to searingly quick Exige S - Weight reduced by 15 kg - Lotus benchmarks for handling and pure driving experience Applying the Lotus refined Club Racer principles to the already stunning Exige S results in the most inspiring version of an already class-leading sports car. The Exige S is a model that already excels, thanks to its lightweight aluminium chassis-tub and aerodynamically enhanced composite bodywork. Its 3.5-litre supercharged V6 engine delivers exciting performance, benchmark handling and a pure driving experience combined with a 4.0 seconds 0-62mph (0-100km/h) acceleration time and a top speed of 274 km/h (170 mph). Jean-Marc Gales, CEO of Group Lotus plc, expressed his enthusiasm for the new model: "Factoring the Club Racer ethos into the Exige enhances the track-focussed potential of this important model.

Genii capitalizing on Lotus F1 tech with new sports car?

Detractors will tell you that there's little to be applied from Formula One racing to the cars we drive, but what about the cars most of us could only dream of driving? We're talking about supercars from the likes of Ferrari and McLaren - two hugely successful F1 racing teams that have successfully made the transition into building exotic sports cars for the road. And soon there may be one more.
That would be the Lotus F1 Team, which is rumored to be working on a sports car project of its own. Now we know what you might be thinking: Lotus already makes sports cars. Indeed they do, only the F1 team has nothing more to do with the automaker behind the Exige and Evora than the name they share. Today the team (formerly known as Toleman, Benetton and Renault) is owned by Genii Capital, whose chairman Gerald Lopez recently confirmed the rumors to Auto Motor und Sport: "We are going to develop a carbon chassis for a sports car that can be built in large quantities.... But this has nothing to do with Formula 1."
With little to nothing in the way of details available, the circulating rumors had tied the venture to on-again, off-again Italian auto marque De Tomaso. But our source at ATS (which recently bought the rights to the De Tomaso name following Gian Mario Rossignolo's aborted attempt to revive it) firmly denied the prospect of any such collaboration. Spokesmen for the Lotus F1 Team would not divulge any information; neither would the press office for parent company Genii Capital, leaving the door wide open to speculation once again.