Lotus E20 To Be Powered By Ice Cream and Frog's Legs

2012 Lotus E20

After Caterham, McLaren, Ferrari and Force India, we now have the fifth F1 car unveiling of this season, courtesy of Lotus F1. Somehow the stepped nose design is smoother here than on the other three to feature it, although the black paint might be helping by toning it down a bit. Joining the CT01, MP4-27, F2012 and VJM05 is the equally-sexy-named E20, which sounds like a sun cream that's half as effective, but is actually meant to signify the 20th anniversary of the Enstone factory it's made in... as well as carrying on the tradition of every Lotus starting with the letter E.

After Vitaly Petrov, Nick Heidfeld and later Bruno Senna only managed a so-so season last year, despite a very promising start, new driver line up Kimi "Ice(cream)man" Räikkönen and Romain Grosjean will be hoping for a better end to this season, as well as the same kind of start. We'll find that out in due course, but for now the JPS-homage is looking good, and the stepped nose has been done in a similar way to Force India's car, in that the ridges on the side (originally done by Red Bull a couple of years ago) satisfy the new height regulations, while the middle section is allowed a smoother ascent. This makes it look better than the Ferrari F2012.

It would also appear to improve the visibility

I can't really think of anything more to add, as the rest is basically the same kind of thing as the rest of the grid, so here are some more pictures, borrowed from F1 Fanatic:

Left to right: Jerome D'Ambrosio (3rd driver), Romain Grosjean, Eric Boullier (team boss), Kimi Räikkönen

Below is also a nice long video of the unveiling, as well as a tour of Enstone. There's a technical interview at 15:07:

Uploaded: 5/2/12

Running Time: 21:04

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