19/10/2009
NEWS STORY
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Talking to Pitpass, Lotus F1 Racing Chief Technical Officer, Mike Gascoyne has dismissed internet speculation that the windtunnel model unveiled by Lotus last week is in fact a Force India model.
In the wake of last week's press release from Lotus a number of readers contacted Pitpass claiming the model shown to be nothing more than a Force India VJM02, indeed, threads making similar claims subsequently appeared on a number of forums and message boards.
Contacted by Pitpass, Gascoyne was only too happy to put the record straight.
"The model is an entirely new model manufactured by Fondtech on behalf of Lotus F1 Racing," he told us, "and is based on a 2010 spec chassis geometry designed at our Design Office in Cologne, and includes a fuel tank to comply with the 2010 ban on refuelling and associated increase in wheelbase caused by these regulations.
"It is also based on the Cosworth engine installation and cooling requirements, and the Xtrac gearbox package," he continued. "The nosebox, crash structures and front and rear suspension is also as specified by our design team. The bodywork is a first iteration version based on generic current trends, but this will rapidly evolve as a result of our windtunnel testing, the first week of which took place last week. Unfortunately, due to obvious reasons, we will not be able issue pictures of these updates.
The confusion may have come about as the photos were taken with a set of old 2009 tyres," he added. "We are testing with 2010 tyre and these were just used for the photo - the tyres are actually the property of Bridgestone."