For Lotus, New Engine May Be Too Little Too Late At Honda Indy Toronto
HVM's Simona de Silvestro has finished only three of nine races this season and was black-flagged after 10 laps in the Indianapolis 500 because her Lotus/Judd powered DW12 was too slow. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (2012)
For Lotus, New Engine May Be Too Little Too Late At Honda Indy Toronto
It was announced earlier this week that Lotus/Judd will have a new and updated engine package for the single car team that remains in competition in the 2012 IZOD IndyCar Series (IICS).
We are now going to be treated to the 10th race in a scheduled 16 race season in the streets of Toronto, Ontario, Canada for the Honda Indy Toronto but, sadly, the addition of a single Lotus-powered competitor, no matter how good the engine, is of little consequence now that the effort has eroded to a single driver on a single team.
This announcement, if it came about by the third race of the season, may have saved the effort for 2012, but with the exodus of Dragon Racing's Sebastien Bourdais & Katherine Legge, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing's Oriol Servia, and Bryan Herta Autosport's Alex Tagliani before the Indianapolis 500 headline event, who cares?
The fact of the matter, the Lotus effort came along late with little or no team testing under the assumption that this would be an easy branding add-on and that some how Lotus would be competitive out-of-the-box against the likes of major manufacturing efforts of Honda and Chevrolet ... not to mention established team resource support from the likes of Andretti, Penske, and Ganassi.
Let's be serious, British based HVM with their single female driver, Simona de Silvestro, no matter how talented and dedicated she is, will have very little impact on the competitive nature of this new Lotus/Judd package other than deliver an on-track test conducted during the event of an IICS season race.
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