Caterham AirAsia will adopt the same livery as Lotus ART

Already, the colors of the different teams had been contested in the off-season: Team Lotus, still called Lotus Racing at the time, had announced first a change of colors to adopt the black and gold colors as a tribute to the famous livery of Ayrton Senna.

However, when the sponsorship contract between Lotus Cars and the now-defunct Renault F1 Team was announced, it was revealed that this specific livery would be worn by the Lotus Renault GP team as it was similar to that of the Renault F1 Team in 2010. This led Team Lotus to make a U-turn on its colors and retain the 2010 colors, which were green and yellow.

But the situation became even more complicated when Tony Fernandes decided to commit to GP2 for the 2011 season. As the legal battle with Lotus Cars was not yet over, he preferred not to make any reference to the name of his F1 team and instead favored another of his brands, namely the airline AirAsia. Since its traditional colors are red and white, these were the colors adopted.

But the story dictated that nothing would be simple around this famous name, Lotus. Indeed, on September 22, Lotus Cars announced a deepened partnership with the GP2 team, ART Grand Prix. The decision was then made to adopt the traditional Lotus competition colors, namely green and yellow! The situation from the start of the championship was as follows: Team Lotus’s little sister sported the red and white colors that had been used by ART Grand Prix, while Lotus ART adopted the yellow and green colors taken on by Team Lotus.

Indeed, the French team could not adopt the same livery as Lotus Renault GP for the simple and good reason that it was never the little sister team of the Renault F1 Team, a role traditionally occupied by another French team, DAMS.

But this entire balance has just been disrupted by Air Asia, which has decided to completely change its livery to align with the F1 team. Indeed, a new element has brought the two entities closer: Tony Fernandes has become the owner of the English manufacturer Caterham. He took the opportunity to rename his GP2 team to Caterham Air Asia while the manufacturer’s logo appeared on the radiators of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen during the last British Grand Prix.

It is therefore possible that two competing teams wear the same colors, a solution all the more comfortable as Davide Valsecchi (Air Asia) is in the title fight with Jules Bianchi (Lotus ART) and Romain Grosjean (DAMS). This will certainly facilitate TV commentary and understanding for the spectators gathered trackside.

To comment on the announcement of this change on its Facebook page, Tony Fernandes’ team simply remarked: « What do you think?? Clever, huh?! The new bodywork arrives later in the week….» Why not wait until the end of the season for everyone to agree and start afresh with distinctive colors for each?

With the participation of RacingBusiness.fr