F1 pilot Kovalainen is aware of growing pains with rookie team

Malaysian-backed Lotus team’s car development still very much a work in progress

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After a short hiatus, Heikki Kovalainen has a ride for the 2010 Formula One season.
      The 28-year-old, who drove for McLaren this year, seemed to be destined for a spell away from the F1 circuit like his compatriot Kimi Räikkönen, but now it is clear that Finland will have a Formula One cockpit representative next year in addition to the Finnish-German driver Nico Rosberg.
     
On Monday morning the newcomer team Lotus F1 Racing announced in Kuala Lumpur that Heikki Kovalainen would accompany Jarno Trulli as its pilots when the new season gets under way in Bahrain in March.
      Kovalainen’s career in F1 already looked to be very much at stake after the November announcement that the reigning World Drivers' Champion Jenson Button would replace the Finn at McLaren. That decision also led to former world champion Kimi Räikkönen's withdrawal from the sport, at least for the coming season.
     
Kovalainen is satisfied with the new contract.
      “I saw Lotus F1 Racing as the best choice for me to progress my career, after considering several other options that were available to me”, Kovalainen says in a Lotus press release.
      “The team has ambitious plans to become successful, so after a little while we need to be making progress to keep the Lotus name at its current high status.”
     
Finnish television viewers would do well, though, not to expect the Finnish national anthem to be played too many times in the course of the coming F1 season. The last time it was heard was at Spa this year, when Räikkönen got his only victory of the 2009 campaign.
      In 2010 Lotus is one of the four rookies in the paddock, despite its famous name, with echoes of earlier great days in the sport in the hands of drivers such as Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Ayrton Senna, and even Mika Häkkinen at one time.
      The new Malaysian-backed outfit (in Malaysia it is even known not as Lotus but as 1Malaysia F1 Team), operating from Britain was accepted on September 15th as the very last team to the series.
      The development of the car itself is still very much under way and the team is likely to miss the winter’s first tests in Valencia between February 1st and 3rd.
     
The team is also suffering from a staff shortage, even though the termination of the Toyota team has provided some relief.
      The Chief Technical Officer of Lotus F1 Racing Mike Gascoyne has hired a lot of people from the Toyota Cologne factory.
      But even they will not be able to start with the new team before the end of January.
     
On the Formula One circuit the name Lotus definitely has a historic and heroic ring to it. However, apart from the similar-sounding name Kovalainen’s new employer has little to do with the former legendary Team Lotus.
     
In 1996 the Malaysian car manufacturer Proton bought the British sports car manufacturer Lotus Cars, and this deal entitles the Lotus F1 Racing team, backed by the Malaysian government, the use of the word Lotus in its name.
      Lotus F1 Racing’s operation is entirely funded by Malaysian money. The fact that Kovalainen’s signing with the team was announced in Kuala Lumpur by the Malaysian Prime Minister Dato Sri Najib Tun Ra–ak speaks volumes of the significance of the entire undertaking to the Malaysian people.
     
The cars, however, are manufactured in England. The team has rented for its use the facility in Hingham Norfolk that Bentley used in its LeMans project.
      The premises are only a stone’s throw away from the Lotus Cars factory in Long Stratton.
      Like the rest of the newcomer teams, Lotus F1 Racing also uses Cosworth engines, the performance and reliability of which are anybody’s guess at this stage.
      All signs seem to indicate that the four newcomers will be the pushovers in the 2010 season.
     
But at least Lotus’s funding seems to be in order, as neither of the team’s pilots have had to resort to bringing in sponsorship money.
      As Lotus aspires to be an entirely Malaysian team, it seems to have managed to strike a sponsorship deal with the Petronas oil giant, which backed the Sauber team from 1997 and is the main sponsor of the Malaysian Grand Prix.
     
To most observers, Kovalainen's new employer will be seen as a step backwards after his enjoying the heights of McLaren alongside Lewis Hamilton, but then again Kovalainen only managed one win in his two-year stint with McLaren.
      He will have to see this opportunity as his last shot at making something out of Formula One.
      It will not be easy, and there will be few opportunities to score points, let alone stand on the winner's podium.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Kimi Räikkönen to take sabbatical year from Formula One (18.11.2009)

Links:
  Heikki Kovalainen (Wikipedia)
  Lotus F1 Racing
  Lotus F1 Racing (Wikipedia)
  Team Lotus (Wikipedia)

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