Big milestone for Lotus racing at Monza

Tony Fernandes Lotus Racing team principal with Mike Gascoyne the team's chief technical Officer.

Sep.3 (Lotus Racing) The Italian Grand Prix at Monza marks the last European race of the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship. The race will be a mislestone for the team as on 12 september 2009 the Anglo_Malaysian team were granted entry into the Formula 1 World Championship by the FIA.

The anniversary means a great deal to team principal Tony Fernandes, “Exactly one year ago on September 12th our Formula One dream came true, and now we’ll be competing at one of the world’s great race tracks, bringing the green and yellow cars back to where they belong, and I can’t wait to see the reaction of the crowds when we take to the track. It has been an amzing journey already, but after Monza we’ll be heading back to Asia, and it’s going to keep getting more exciting with every step we take.”

Heikki Kovalainen leads team mate Jarno Trulli

The Lotus team boss added, “I’ve had to watch the last few races on TV as other commitments have kept me away from the races, so it’ll be good to be back on track in Italy. The last couple of weeks have been very exciting for the whole team – we’ve seen Nabil Jeffri, a Malaysian superstar in the making, become the youngest ever driver to test an F1 car at the aero test we ran on Wednesday, and it was a very proud moment for me to see him put in a great day’s work for us in what must have been a pretty stressful environment for such a young guy. He proves what I’ve always believed – work hard to achieve your dreams and they will come true.”

Lotus Racing the fruits of a team effort

Mike Gascoyne, Lotus Racing chief technical officer reflects, “Monza will be very special for me, Tony, Din, Nasa, Riad and the whole team on a personal level. Race day is the 12th September, which is exactly one year to the day since we heard that our entry into the 2010 Formula One World Championship had been accepted. It’s hard to put into words just what that means to all of us, but it’s already been an incredible 365 days, and we have many more exciting times to come. I’ve been asked a number of times if I really thought we’d be able to do what looked to many like an impossible task – creating a team from literally just words on a piece of paper to now sitting 10th in the Championship, best of the new teams and with a very bright future ahead of us.”