COOPER: What’s In A Name?

Formula 1

COOPER: What’s In A Name?

The battle for the use of the Lotus name is over then, and henceforth only one team will lay claim it....

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted November 04, 2011 Balen (BEL)

Group Lotus CEO Dany Bahar. (Photo: Getty Images)

We learned yesterday that from next season the Renault and Virgin chassis names will both disappear from the F1 grid, and Caterham and Marussia will make their debuts as F1 constructors. Lotus will still be present, albeit via a different team than the one that now uses the name.

That was the headline outcome of Thursday’s Formula One Commission meeting in Geneva, although the decisions still have to be formally ratified by the World Motor Sport Council on December 7.
We only know the result because word leaked out from some of the participants in the meeting. There has been no official announcement from the FIA.

In fact Jean Todt told everyone not to talk to the press about the detail of the gathering – in which a wide range of key F1 topics were discussed – although he acknowledged that it would be impossible to keep the team name decision quiet. It duly emerged last night.

Ironically today the FIA then shot itself in the foot by changing ‘Team Lotus’ to ‘Team Caterham’ in the official points tables on its own website! That was quickly rectified, since the changes apply not to 2011, but to next season.

The battle for the use of the Lotus name is over then, and henceforth only one team will lay claim it – the organization that has variously been known as Toleman, Benetton and Renault over its 30-year history.

For over a year Team Lotus and Group Lotus have been at war, and at times things have got very personal between their respective bosses, Tony Fernandes and Dany Bahar.

Twice this year they have been in the UK courts to argue about who can call themselves Lotus. In essence the judge decided that both had a right to do so, on the basis that many years ago Colin Chapman split the road car and racing parts of his empire into separate companies.

Although it wasn’t actually racing, Team Lotus continued to exist as a company from 1994 onwards under David Hunt, the brother of former World Champion James. It was he who sold the rights to the name to Fernandes last year, giving him the chance to turn Lotus Racing into Team Lotus, after Group Lotus ended his licensing deal.

The wind changed direction a couple of months ago. Fernandes applied to the FIA to change his constructor name to that of Caterham, the small UK sportscar company he bought earlier this year. And in turn LRGP applied to change from Renault to Lotus.

In other words, the old enemies had come to an arrangement that seemed to suit both of them. However, other teams objected, and wanted the changes to be discussed openly, and ground rules established for future cases.

Quite rightly, many F1 insiders see constructor names as sacrosanct, and not something to be changed on a whim to suit the arrival of a sponsor, or for some other commercial advantage.

That’s what led to the scheduling of yesterday’s meeting. A whole bunch of other stuff was then added to the schedule – the 2012 calendar etc – and later Marussia Virgin joined the party by asking if it could change its chassis name from that of a relative minor sponsor (i.e. Virgin) to that of a major investment and driving force behind its planned expansion (Marussia).

The rapprochement between the two claimants to the Lotus name came as something of a surprise, given their recent history in the courts. Nothing has been said by either side since yesterday, but a couple of races ago I asked Tony Fernandes what it was all about, and what he said then provides some fascinating background to what went down in Switzerland.

“I’d rather not talk too much about it,” he said when I broached the subject. “What I can say is that the present situation is untenable in my mind. It’s not good for F1, it’s not good for fans, it’s not good for sponsors. We’re proud of what we did, bringing Team Lotus back. We’ve done a good thing, and if it’s not for us to carry on it’s not for us to carry on, and we’ll make our own name somewhere else.

“It’s still up in the air, it still requires approvals etc, but I think we have been big boys about it. And as I’ve always said, I never wanted to damage the brand. I think the present situation helps nobody.

There are no winners and losers, I think we’re taking our best step forward and saying in some ways at least if this idea works out Team Lotus will be reunited with Group Lotus, and good luck to them.

“No hard feelings on our part. I think we’ve done a good thing by bringing the name back, and if we didn’t bring it back who knows when it would have been brought back. So at least in retrospect it’s probably in the right place now with the cars, which was always my plan anyway, to kind of bring it in with the cars.”

Caterham team boss Tony Fernandes is excited about the team's move. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

So what caused Fernandes to change his mind and suddenly do a deal with his old enemy? It’s a complicated situation and one that also involves a lot of Malaysian politics, since Group Lotus is of course ultimately owned by Proton.

Intriguingly a few weeks ago AirAsia boss Fernandes did a deal with another former rival with government connections when he acquired a 20% share of Malaysian Airlines. QPR, the British Premier League soccer team he recently bought from Bernie Ecclestone, now has Malaysian Airlines logos on its shirts. So are these deals all connected? That’s what the world has assumed.

Tony insists they are not: “It’s nothing to do with it. If you think I’m going to spend a billion dollars buying Malaysian Airlines... This [F1] is very small, it’s nothing to do with it.”

Whatever other deals may or may not have been done, the bottom line is that Fernandes also recognized that he was promoting the Lotus name while owning a company called Caterham that was pitching for the same customers, guys with a bit of cash who want a sporty two-seater to play around in.

Nevertheless it seemed strange that having fought Bahar and Group Lotus in the courts, and convinced many outsiders of his claim on the Lotus name, Fernandes was so eager to renounce it.

“I was arguing because there wasn’t any give on the other side. There were legal cases, so of course you fight your position. But when there was a compromise position, if you look at all the reports, I always opened out, I always said if there’s a solution, we’re willing to look at it. But it had to be a fair solution. It couldn’t be a one-side solution. Then we might as well stay as we are.

“The courts have said some things. We have a car company and an F1 team. Doesn’t it make sense for it all to be together, rather than that we’re always at each other’s throats? It’s a unique situation that calls for a unique solution.”

Some rival teams claimed that the Caterham brand isn’t strong enough for F1, but again Fernandes had no time for that.

“Lotus is staying in F1 isn’t it? And how different is it from Sauber, or HRT, or even Virgin? What if I called it Air Asia? Caterham has racing pedigree, it races. What the brand is now and what the brand is in 10 years time are completely different things.

“What was Air Asia 10 years ago? Now it’s a huge brand. My forte is building brands, and we’ve done a very good job with Team Lotus. For a team that’s 10th I think we’ve done pretty well in terms of getting the coverage.”

I have it on good authority that in the Geneva meeting Tony used that very AirAsia example to strengthen his case. It clearly worked, because all the name changes went through without too much opposition. And crucially, with no penalty in terms of loss of commercial rights under the Concorde Agreement.

Fernandes won a lot of fans over with his cavalier approach (he’s doing the same in English soccer), and the Lotus name carried a lot of goodwill with it. However, he now has to start from scratch with Caterham. He clearly has big plans for the road car side, especially in Asia. Let’s see what he has up his sleeve...

Adam Cooper notched up his 26th season as a racing journalist in 2010. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam Cooper

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