Lotus F1 revealed its 2012 challenger at Enstone this evening, named the E20 to mark the 20th creation from its Oxfordshire factory. With a new driver pairing and the continuity of Renault engines, the whole team is confident of a successful season and have set a firm target of fourth place in the Constructors' Championship.
"Our reputation is good in terms of innovation and we brought through the last years some nice ones and a more delicate one," said Team Principal Eric Boullier. "My biggest hope is obviously to bring this positivity back again and to make sure this team is again at the front of the grid for many years and a long time.
"Also to have all the people enjoying life here and enjoying their passion for motor-racing and F1. The fear is that we can have anything wrong which you cannot expect or handle and which will slow down this process."
Technical Director James Allison also spoke of the massive differences between Lotus' latest design and the car it rolled out at the beginning of 2011, with a number of regulation changes having been ratified for the upcoming campaign.
"It differs in thousands of ways but if we're talking about the rule changes, there are a number for 2012," he said. "There are two particularly obvious rule changes which all the cars are going to feature which will be very clear to any observer of the sport."
Gérard Lopez, head of Lotus team owner Genii Capital, added that fourth place in the title race is the target this year, with the squad losing out to Mercedes GP last season.
"I think the hopes are to be able to get one season together in the way we were already expecting last year, we hope to have a strong car and have strong drivers, one of which is of course and ex F1 World Champion," he explained. "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."
Lotus' 2012 season preparations kick off on Monday with a demonstration run at Jerez, before Raikkonen and Grosjean split mileage during the following four-day test.
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