Lotus to badge Colin Kolles' LMP2 World Endurance Championship programme

[Exploded]

source

Lotus has confirmed that it will back Colin Kolles' team's World Endurance Championship LMP2 programme, as revealed by last week's AUTOSPORT magazine.

The Kolles-run Kodewa squad will campaign two Lola B12/80s under the Lotus title, with Lotus-badged V8s from Engine Developments, which is also building the sportscar-maker's IndyCar engine.

Lotus's motorsport director Claudio Berro said the partnership was an ideal way for the group to take a step up the endurance racing ladder after returning to the GT class with the Evora last year.

"This is a very exciting step for us," said Berro.

"We made no secret of our intention to tackle LMP2 this year but it had to be done in the right way and we're very happy with the set-up with our partners.

"More than anything else, we're looking forward to our return to Le Mans in this capacity after our success with the Evora last year.

"The engine development is going well but there's a lot to do over the coming weeks to ensure that the car is prepared for the intensive testing that we must undertake to ensure we're ready to compete."

[Bibs]

Look forward to seeing that at Le Mans

[NedaSay]

So Lotus is badging BMW-Judd engines!

I take that the Evora GTE project is canned!?

Edited January 31, 2012 by NedaSay

[Exploded]

rebadge, after rebadge, after rebadge, so boring...

If the GTE project is canned, then that would be a ill-born project costing loads of money, and through before it even really started...

But that is the way the management works these days at Lotus, having no strategy, is also a form of strategy...

[chandrew]

I have no problems with the current strategy. It seems to make a lot of sense (to me at least) of linking with existing (& performing) teams. For one it's easier to get sponsorship for a team with a track-record and I guess it might be easier to cross sell sponsors to new categories.

What I do want to see is evidence that they share knowledge / expertise / resources across motorsport interests (and ideally cars / engineering where relevant) over time. Buying companies / JVs are great ways of buying talented folk with much lower risk than recruiting them.

I would be very surprised in a few years time Lotus didn't have a profitable motorsport operation which also added to the brand prestige of the cars / engineering businesses.