10 years ago: when Enstone (already) bought a Mercedes engine

A few days later, we were on a title: "10 years ago, to the day"! This Tuesday, Alpine has formalized its partnership with Mercedes and the use of the German engine from 2026, a few weeks later the killing of the engine program in Viry-Châtillon. Doesn't that remind you of anything? In 2014, on October 9th of that year to be precise, the team ofenstone – which was then running under the name Lotus – announced the abandonment of the engine Renault to use the power unit… Mercedes ! Or when history repeats itself…

Let's be clear right away: yes, the contexts are very different between the Lotus case of 2014 and the case Alpine today. At the time, Renault was completely disengaged from the Enstone team and only kept an engine business. Lotus, for its part, was a team managed by the company Genii Capital and its director Gérard Lopez, who became the majority shareholder in 2012. In 2014, Lotus F1 Team was not a factory team but a customer, and had continued the collaboration with Renault even after the complete purchase of the team in 2012.

The Lotus-Renault partnership was effective at the time because, despite limited resources and financial difficulties, the British team managed to regularly compete for podiums, culminating in two victories in 2012 and 2013 (4th in the Constructors' Championship in 2013). However, the turning point of the hybrid era in 2014 went badly for the French engine manufacturer, with performances lower than the competition and much more fragile. That year, Lotus had also bet on an incredible aerodynamic concept with an asymmetrical walrus nose, very effective for getting people talking, a little less so for going fast on the track...

© Francois Flamand / DPPI

Result: in 2014, Lotus experienced a black season with Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado with 10 small points scored and a sad 8th place in the Constructors' Championship. A catastrophic situation for the Enstone team which survived in particular thanks to the bonuses awarded at the end of the season according to the ranking at the end of the championship. Lotus then had to find an immediate and radical solution to quickly find performance and move up the hierarchy.

Mercedes, Lotus' lifeline

From summer 2014, rumors were circulating about an engine partnership with Mercedes for the 2015 season. The German power unit was by far the most efficient and reliable on the grid for the first season of hybrid engines. An idea made possible by the association of McLaren with Honda allowing Mercedes to supply another customer team. On October 9, 2014, after months of rumors, the signing of the contract between Lotus and the firm with the Star was finally announced for 2015 and until 2020. For the first time since 1994, the Enstone team is no longer powered by Renault.

"We wanted a long-term plan to build a stable technical program, confided Gérard Lopez, the co-shareholder. There will be a fairly close technical partnership, even if we have favoured the development of our own transmission. The Mercedes managers visited Enstone, took the measure of our installations and our tools and realised that we really had nothing to be ashamed of in our structures compared to those of their other customers. (…) We are not exempt from responsibility for what is happening to us [in 2014]. For 2015, it is certain, we will take fewer risks in aerodynamics, we will not aim for the extreme as we did on the E22. From every point of view.

More conventional in style, the Lotus E23 was above all much more efficient than its predecessor. In four Grands Prix, the 2014 total had already been exceeded thanks to Romain Grosjean. If the car Anglo-German was not a lightning bolt of war either, it regularly played in the middle of the pack, behind the Top Teams that are Mercedes, Ferrari et Red Bull at that time. At Spa-Francorchamps, the Frenchman achieved a great feat by placing his Lotus on the podium in the final laps of the race thanks to a puncture for Sebastian Vettel…and a hidden engine mode offering a power boost never before seen by the British team.

« Romain came at the end of that race and said that the car had never behaved the way it did in the last few laps of the race, explained Matthew Carter, former Lotus director, in the podcast Missed ApexIn 2017. It makes sense: the moment the car goes faster, your aero works better, your tires work better, you don't have to brake as early. Every part of the car worked better because it had that mode. (…) Mercedes never told us what it was."

This coup, however, was short-lived: although Lotus managed to finish 6th in the Constructors' Championship with the Mercedes engine, its ranking was not enough to survive. At the end of 2015, on the verge of bankruptcy, the team was finally bought by Renault, which made its full return to Formula 1 official. Obviously, the agreement with Mercedes was broken and the Diamond team reintegrated a home engine into the single-seater designed at Enstone. And ten years later, history repeated itself with Alpine…and Mercedes.

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