Lotus Motorsport’s IndyCar driver Takuma Sato and 1996 Champ Car winner, Jimmy Vasser have also given extensive feedback having driven the Evora Cup/GT4 at the legendary Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca race circuit (pictured here in the middle of the famed “Corkscrew” turn) in early August 2010, giving Lotus’ newest race car a most diverse and comprehensive pedigree. Image Credit: Lotus Motorsport
Over the years, the Lotus Cup Race Series has developed into one of the most successful enthusiasts race series brands in the world. Races feature capacity grids of Elise, Exige, 2-Eleven and Europa race cars racing and jostling for position. Previously operated exclusively from several countries in Europe and Japan, the Lotus Cup has now expanded considerably to include the USA, UK and Eastern Europe.
For 2011, not only has the Lotus Cup grown in size, the organization of the series has been consolidated. For the first time this year, drivers will now race to one set of rules, regulations and formats in championships around the world including:
• Lotus Cup UK
• Lotus Cup Europe
• Lotus Cup Italy • Lotus Cup USA (West Coast)• Lotus Cup USA (East Coast) • Lotus Cup Eastern Europe
• Lotus Cup Japan (new for 2011 in BOLD)
Director of Lotus Motorsport Claudio Berro said: “Lotus sports car racing is one of the most popular forms of accessible motorsport in the world, both at a spectator and participant level. Now is the time to bring these championships under the Lotus umbrella, to ensure consistent look and feel to the competition. This will have obvious benefits to the current drivers and encourage new racers, ensuring that the cars and components remain good value and the competition retains its accessibility.”
Lotus will provide increased support and investment for these race series and will also ensure that the new Cup Championships retain the community feel and friendliness that an enthusiast based race series needs.
The Lotus Cup Championships will receive a new identity, logos, branding, website and Corporate Identity which are aligned closely to Lotus’ new motorsport strategy and initiatives announced over the last few months and consolidated at the Autosport show last weekend.
The excitement and race heritage design of Lotus will be zipping by at a North American track in 2011 at the following venues!
Lotus Cup USA 2011 – West Coast Schedule (subject to change)
5th -6th March
Willow Springs Raceway, Rosamond , CA
9th – 10th April
Firebird International Raceway, Pheonix, AZ
28th – 29th May
Auto Club Speedway, Fontana, CA
25th – 29th June
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Monterey, CA
27th – 28th August
Miller Motorsports Park , Salt Lake City, UT
24th – 25th September
Buttonwillow Raceway, Buttonwillow, CA
15th – 16th October
Spring Mountain Raceway, Pahrump, NV
5th – 6th November
Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Las Vegas , NV
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Lotus Cup USA 2011 – East Coast Schedule
9th – 10th May
Watkins Glen International Raceway, Watkins Glen, NY
11th – 12th July
Virginia International Raceway, Alton, VA
24th – 25th September
Barber Motorsports Park, Birmingham . AL
The only schedule conflict for the inaugural 2011 North American campaign participant would happen on September 24th – 25th. If one wanted to race “bi-coastal”, the campaigner would have to choose between Buttonwillow Raceway, Buttonwillow, California about a two hour drive North on the 5 artery into the central valley from Los Angeles, or the latest rising star dedicated road racing track on the North American racing scene (which hosts the IZOD IndyCar Series – April 10, 2011), Barber Motorsports Park, Birmingham, Alabama.
The series rules may exclude a “bi-coastal” desire to race in all scheduled inaugural Lotus Cup Series races in North America … but this does present an interesting proposition for the first time Lotus Cup Race Series participant.
For further information regarding the Lotus Cup, please contact Lotus Motorsport: motorsport@lotuscars.com
NASA has just published its report on Toyota unintended acceleration. I haven’t seen the full report, but the summary I have read has a familiar ring. And I predict that lunatics and skeptics are going to be far more likely to believe the space agency actually landed Americans on the moon than they will be willing to accept NASA’s findings that almost all cases of unintended acceleration, starting in the 1980s with Audi and now two and a half decades later with Toyota, are the result of pedal error.
Whether it was mangling Audi transmissions to induce UA or, more recently, crossing wires that are impossible to cross to cause Toyota engines to zoom out of control, the legal profession’s eagerness to mimic the tactics of Middle Age witch hunters and the willingness of some less than scrupulous engineers to sell-out their profession are appalling.
These lawyers and their engineer /scientist collaborators are running in circles chasing non-existent electronic ghosts. It’s time to let these ghosts rest in peace.
By the way, what has happened to complaints about unintended acceleration? Attorneys and pundits might say Toyota has swept them under the carpet. But they seem to have disappeared about as quickly as they surfaced. Were they simply an example of mass hysteria, psychosis or hypnosis? Or maybe the ghosts moved on to a parallel universe, leaving the Los Angeles Times scrambling to fill another black hole with its biased reporting.
Toyota is not completely blameless here. There were incidents with faulty pedals and throttles sticking as a result of tolerance stack-up under carpets.
But this ain’t rocket science.
And it’s about time to let Toyota get back to doing what it does best: selling high-quality products to appreciative customers around the world.
Yesterday in WheelsTV I gave you a rundown (Actually it was a walkdown.) on some of Continental’s innovative technologies. But I saved one for special mention today: Continental’s Accelerator Force Feedback Pedal (AFFP). It’s one of Conti’s Human-Machine Interface (HMI) technologies, and I was able to evaluate it on a BMW 3 Series. Instead of having the driver watch an upshift light on the dash or listen for a tone, the AFFP vibrates or adds a counterforce as feedback to the driver to educate his right foot in driving more efficiently to save fuel and reduce emissions. Pedal vibration and/or counterforce are fully tunable. This technology can also be integrated into several other Conti safety technologies, as for example, providing feedback to the driver of his current distance to other vehicles. (more…)
Hyundai has been selling cars in the US since 1986. And after a bit of a sputtering start, the last decade has seen years of steady growth for Hyundai in this market. Starting at a mere 0.6 percent market share in 1998, Hyundai reached 3.0 percent penetration in 2008 and in 2009, a year in which world-wide recession and plummeting auto sales affected virtually every auto maker in this market, Hyundai sales rocketed to a 4.2 percent share of market.
So what has Hyundai been doing right? Seems like just about everything: Quality products competitively priced. J.D. Power quality and North American Car of the Year Awards. Attention grabbing warranty programs. A job-loss vehicle return program. Depreciation lower than Toyota and Ford. High-tech powertrains. Industry-leading fuel economy. More standard features than the competition. Leadership in active and passive safety technologies. Oh, and did I mention styling? Say hello to the eye-stopping 2011 Hyundai Sonata.
Is it possible for a car to get too big for it’s britches? Case in point: the new for 2009 Toyota Corolla XRS. The 2009 Corolla is the 10th generation of the best selling passenger car in history and the longest-running Toyota car model sold in America. Note the word car here because the Toyota Land Cruiser has the distinction of being the longest running name plate of all time in America having first touched our Pacific shores in 1958, 10 years before the Corolla. (more…)
More than a year ago, as I viewed GM’s “situation,” I only somewhat facetiously told colleagues that the best thing GM could do would be to simply shut down all its operations in the US and become the very thing that it considered its worst enemy: an importer. In many respects, the best products GM builds these days are based on engineering coming out of Korea (Daewoo for its small vehicles) and Germany (Opel for its midsize platforms). All of GM’s problems would “magically” go away if they went out of business in the US and simply became the new Toyota. (more…)
Mazda designers and engineers faced a serious dilemma as they gathered to create the next Mazda6. The current model didn’t have the broad appeal of its direct family sedan Asian competitors—Toyota Camry, Honda Accord and Hyundai Sonata—because it was smaller on the outside and on the inside. It also trailed these competitors in quality and power. (more…)
There are very few arrows in Toyota’s quiver that haven’t found the mark, but the Echo, introduced in 2000, was one of them. As an attempt to appeal to a youthful audience, the homely, ungainly, Echo was beloved by few. But while the Echo did not find a welcoming home in America, it’s spawn has successfully spread around the world to more than 150 countries (including here in the form of the Scion xA and xB) where it has become the third-best selling vehicle in global sales for Toyota behind the Corolla and Camry, under the Yaris, Platz and Vitz nameplates. (more…)
