{"id":13664,"date":"2011-09-11T07:28:15","date_gmt":"2011-09-11T11:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=13664"},"modified":"2011-09-11T07:28:15","modified_gmt":"2011-09-11T11:28:15","slug":"fernandes-hints-at-team-lotus-name-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/fernandes-hints-at-team-lotus-name-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Fernandes hints at Team Lotus name change"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Fernandes has hinted strongly that he will drop the Team Lotus name for his formula one team ahead of the 2012 season.<\/p>\n<p>The Malaysian entrepreneur has been locked in a bitter dispute with Renault sponsor Group Lotus but won the legal right to keep deploying the name for his Hingham-based team.<\/p>\n<p>But Fernandes, also the owner of the AirAsia airline, has subsequently bought the British specialist sports car maker Caterham and renamed his GP2 team Caterham Team AirAsia.<\/p>\n<p>He said at Monza: &#8220;I always had a problem with &#8216;am I really Team Lotus?&#8217; because there&#8217;s a big question mark on that.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t have a name and not monetise it.\u00a0 So we will have to wait and see &#8230; I don&#8217;t think this is healthy for anyone, having Lotus-Renault and Team Lotus.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>F1&#8217;s Enstone based team, currently widely known as Renault, might also be heading for a name change, with the Guardian newspaper reporting that sponsor Group Lotus could finally be set to buy in.<\/p>\n<p>The report said current owners Genii are &#8220;reportedly in discussion about selling the team&#8221;, with Lotus &#8220;in pole position to get it&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tony Fernandes has hinted strongly that he will drop the Team Lotus name for his formula one team ahead of the 2012 season. The Malaysian entrepreneur has been locked in a bitter dispute with Renault sponsor Group Lotus but won the legal right to keep deploying the name for his Hingham-based team. But Fernandes, also &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[2241,5262,5340,62],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13664"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13665,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13664\/revisions\/13665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}