Sources close to Lotus report that the Enstone based team is ready to announce the Williams-departed Pastor Maldonado as Romain Grosjean’s teammate for 2014.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the talented Nico Hulkenberg was Lotus’ top choice to replace the Ferrari-bound Kimi Raikkonen.<\/p>\n
But that was dependent on the team’s new investment millions from the ‘Quantum’ group arriving in time, but the conclusion of the deal has been repeatedly delayed.<\/p>\n
So, amid reports Lotus has struggled financially in 2013 despite finishing the championship a competitive fourth, the team has signed up Maldonado and his apparently EUR 35-40 million in annual PDVSA backing.<\/p>\n
We reported earlier on Friday that Maldonado’s arrival at Lotus has only been possible due to a deal between PDVSA, the Venezuelan-owned oil giant, and Total, linked both to engine supplier Renault and Frenchman Grosjean.<\/p>\n
Total is a French oil multinational, but a deal to allow the branding of the two seemingly conflicting sponsors on the 2014 Lotus car was reached earlier this week in Caracus, the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat reported.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sources close to Lotus report that the Enstone based team is ready to announce the Williams-departed Pastor Maldonado as Romain Grosjean’s teammate for 2014. Earlier, the talented Nico Hulkenberg was Lotus’ top choice to replace the Ferrari-bound Kimi Raikkonen. But that was dependent on the team’s new investment millions from the ‘Quantum’ group arriving in …<\/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":[4525,5262,5340,1842,4724],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20078"}],"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=20078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20079,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20078\/revisions\/20079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}