{"id":15763,"date":"2012-04-06T10:56:14","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T14:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=15763"},"modified":"2012-04-06T10:56:14","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T14:56:14","slug":"group-lotus-no-longer-lotus-team-sponsor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/group-lotus-no-longer-lotus-team-sponsor\/","title":{"rendered":"Group Lotus no longer Lotus team sponsor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Group Lotus will no longer sponsor the formula one team that bears its name.<\/p>\n

\"Lotus-F1\"But – as F1’s perpetually bizarre ‘Lotus’ saga takes another twist – the Enstone based team, formerly Renault, will continue to be known as Lotus in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Last year, and in 2010, ‘Lotus’ was the name of the team that is now called Caterham, but a bitter dispute soured that relationship as the Proton-owned car company Group Lotus ended the naming license and made its own bid to enter F1.<\/p>\n

Group Lotus’ new foray blossomed in 2012 with Renault’s renaming to Lotus, amid speculation team owner Genii was keen to get more involved with the iconic sports car marque.<\/p>\n

When asked recently about his team’s relationship with Lotus, Kimi Raikkonen answered clumsily on the Top Gear motoring programme: “Well it’s, er, it (the car) is not a Renault.\u00a0 Lotus is just a sponsor.”<\/p>\n

The Autosport website revealed on Good Friday that the sponsorship deal has been “terminated”.<\/p>\n

However, “We are happy to carry the Lotus name as we believe it is a good name for F1,” explained team owner Genii’s Gerard Lopez.<\/p>\n

“So Lotus are still Lotus despite no longer being sponsored by Lotus?” the Telegraph’s Tom Cary wittily surmised on Twitter.<\/p>\n

And in yet another twist, Lopez refused to rule out a scenario in which Genii actually takes over Group Lotus.<\/p>\n

“We don’t know yet, because we really do not know what the new owner wants to do with it,” he said.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Group Lotus will no longer sponsor the formula one team that bears its name. But – as F1’s perpetually bizarre ‘Lotus’ saga takes another twist – the Enstone based team, formerly Renault, will continue to be known as Lotus in the coming years. Last year, and in 2010, ‘Lotus’ was the name of the team …<\/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":[5262,5340,127,58,2231,152,306,55],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15763"}],"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=15763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15764,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15763\/revisions\/15764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}