Lotus Aiming For 4th In Constructors’ Championship

With Lotus launching their new E20 car earlier today, team co-owner Gerard Lopez has announced that he believes his team can achieve 4th place in this seasons Constructors’ Championship, seemingly leap-frogging Mercedes or even possibly other big teams throughout the season.

With the Enstone-based squad suffering various setbacks during the last few seasons, including Robert Kubica’s near-fatal Rally crash as well as the failure of their exhaust design to work last season, Lopez is confident they can put these setbacks behind them and start afresh in 2012.

With the team winning the 2005 and 2006 World Titles’, they have fallen down the F1 pecking order in recent years, falling to 8th in the 2009 Constructors’ Championship before returning to 5th in the last two years.

With Lotus completely changing their driver line-up for 2012, bringing in 2007 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen and reigning GP2 Champion Romain Grosjean, Lotus are confident they can eventually return to the top of the F1 pecking order.

“The hopes are to be able to get one season together and do what we were expecting last year,” Said Gerard Lopez on their 2012 expectations. “We hope to have a strong car, and have strong drivers, one of which is of course an ex-world champion. We hope to bring the car up to the front of the pack and probably try to aim for fourth as a reasonable goal for this season. We’re obviously extremely proud that finally the Lotus name is a clear concept for everybody in Formula 1 now.”

Pre-season testing gets underway on Tuesday, 40 days before the season opening Australian Grand Prix, a race which Kimi Raikkonen won in 2007 for Ferrari.