Lotus have budget to complete season

Lotus boss Matthew Carter has confirmed the team has a budget in place to see the team to the end of the season, despite rumours this could be their last race weekend without a buyout.

The team have been at the centre of a number of financial problems over the last couple of years, which included a failed bid to buy the team, which led to the departure of Kimi Raikkonen in 2013. Not even the suggested $35m from Pastor Maldonado has been enough to fill the gap, and the action by Charles Pic for not getting his time in the car hasn’t helped the situation.

However, in the Team Principals press conference on Friday, Carter confirmed that the team have enough budget to get to the end of the season, with or without Renault’s help, the rumoured suitor.

“I can guarantee you that we’ll be at Singapore,” he said. “The sea-freight container… one of our sea-freight containers has left, our airfreight will leave next week. We will be in Singapore.

“The financial issues are all over the press, everyone is aware of them. We’re working as hard as we can behind the scenes to get them sorted out. None of them have become terminal, obviously. We’re still here, we’re still racing and we will continue to do that. The negotiations that were referred to earlier on are going on behind the scenes.

“I’m hopeful that’s going to secure our future one way or the other going forward – and when I say one way or the other it just means we have more than one option going forward to secure the future of the team.

“As far as the race of the races this season, we have a budget in place and we will operate to that budget and will be at all the races.”

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