In recent times the Lotus F1 Team have had numerous struggles, from a thoroughly disappointing season in 2014, scoring an underwhelming ten points, to well publicised financial issues. However, just days ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix - the team were hit with yet another issue.
Charles Pic, the former Caterham and Marussia Formula One driver is responsible for a court order in Belgium that means their cars and equipment, may not be able to leave the paddock on Sunday evening. Pic is claiming that the Enstone-based team broke a contract stating that he could drive last year’s chassis the E22 on an allocated amount of days.
Unreliability was the cause
The team, owned by Genii Capital - claim that the unreliability encountered in early 2014 denied Pic his time in the car. Renault Sport F1’s early 2014 Power Unit was drastically unreliable and caused the team and drivers, Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado, headaches about performance in the season ahead. Lotus management, led by Gerard Lopez, Alan Permane and Matthew Carter - the latter of which was not at the team in 2014 pre-season testing - claim that because of these problems they were forced into giving the regular race drivers the maximum amount of time in the car as they could in order to acclimatise to it and, at the time, complex new regulations.
Not satisfied by the response given
Unhappy at this response Pic and his team of lawyers took his case, and the team to court in Belgium, who in turn ruled in favour of the Frenchman. The order by the court, granted bailiffs the ability to impound the team's equipment until the issue between the two parties is resolved. In an extraordinary turn of events on Thursday night at Spa-Francorchamps, senior team management were caught breaking the FIA late night curfew - for the second time in the season. Teams are allowed to break the curfew twice in a season. When summoned to the stewards the team explained their reasoning to breaking the curfew and showed that no work had been done on the cars and so "due to extraneous circumstances" the team were not punished and were consequently given back one of their two curfew exceptions.
Friday on track
Going into Friday's practice, the team had reason to be optimistic as they have since ended the relationship with Renault and switched to the class leading Mercedes PU106B power unit. However in FP1 Maldonado ran wide at Malmedy and crashed the car, writing the front right off, whilst reserve driver Jolyon Palmer struggled with understeer. They finished in eleventh and 17th places respectively. In the day's second session, the team fared a little better and finished seventh (Grosjean) and 15th (Maldonado).
It is the second time that a team have been taken to court this season after the Giedo van der Garde/Sauber F1 team court battle in Australia. Lotus must surely be hoping that just like Van der Garde, Pic drops his case against them.