Tony Fernandes sees 'ego over logic,' as Group Lotus enters the F1 grid
Tony Fernandes, the Team Lotus’ boss sees the whole dispute by Group Lotus, the car manufacturing company as an “ill-logical one.” He believes that their expansion plan and the recent collaboration with the Renault Formula 1 Team, is only a case of 'ego
over logic.' He further assured that he is not going to give up at the ‘Lotus’ brand case and will keep the battle until the team wins.
The car manufacturer and Fernandes indulged into a ‘team name’ dispute earlier this year when the latter announced to continue with the same title for his team in the upcoming year. However, Group Lotus claims that Malaysian entrepreneur does not have the
rights for the team name and filed a case against his team.
The situation became even more intense as a little time back, the Group Lotus announced that it is going to return to the sport and last week signed a deal with the Renault F1 team, as its title sponsor. With this collaboration, the French team has now become,
Lotus Renault GP, bringing two teams with the same name on the 2011’s grid, while both the teams initially decided to come on the grid with the same colour of cars, black and gold. This is the colour of the iconic, Ayrton Senna’s car and of course one of the
most celebrated livery among the Formula One fans.
The Group Lotus, under the constant push of its new boss, Danny Bahar, has largely increased its role in road car production while it is also participating more prominently in the auto race world. The next year it will be seen taking part in GP2, GP3, sports
car racing as well as in IndyCar, besides being an important part of Formula One.
As described by many, Lotus is making an attempt to become a 'British Ferrari,' although Fernandes believes that Bahar is excelling in a wrong direction. He believes that Group Lotus’ objectives, image and public support would have improved in a better way,
had it decided to back the existing Lotus team instead of tying up with Renault.
While looking at the situation, Fernandes compared the intensions of Danny Bahar and the achievements of Enzo Ferrari saying, "Enzo Ferrari did not go and buy something, he built it from scratch. There was the car company and the racing team and they were
together. But in their case they have Enstone, which is called Renault, and Hethel in Norfolk – while we are in Hingham with land to build a wind-tunnel and facility there. Unfortunately ego and power all comes into play and logic gets thrown out of the window."
At the same time, many of the other analysts and Formula One specialists believe that the entire issue with the ‘Lotus’ name and other related issues are just a poor publicity stunts which is only disgracing the legendary ‘Lotus’ legacy but is also confusing
the race fans with similar team names and colours on the grid.
However, to settle some of the issues, Fernandes has recently confirmed that his team will stick to its current 2010 green and yellow livery and let Renault go with black and gold.
He concluded saying, "I do think it would be ludicrous if we are both black and gold, and I can inform you that we will be changing our plans for the colour scheme. We declared that we were going to run in black and gold, and I'm not going to be childish
to say we were first with our plans. They have painted their car black and gold, they have made their intentions clear on that front, so be it."
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