Caterham F1 Team History & Record

After failing in his initial bid to enter the 2010 World Championships in partnership with F3 team Lightspeed, Mike Gascoyne continued to work on securing backing for an entry with Malaysian government backing and was successful when BMW pulled out of F1. Although the new team will be based initially at Hethel, a few miles from the Lotus Cars factory (owned by Malaysian company Proton), plans called for a technical center to be built at the Sepang International Circuit in  Kuala Lumpur and will be called "Lotus F1 Racing" to distinguish it from the original "Team Lotus". Air Asia CEO Tony Fernandes, who's company had sponsored Williams in 2009, would be the CEO of the holding company, "1Malaysia Racing Team" with Gascoyne as Technical Director. The team was the fastest of the three new teams in F1 for 2010 and though they did not score any points, the progress was satisfying.

With the resurrection of the Team Lotus F1 brand by Gerard Lopez and later Eric Boullier for 2011, there were two teams called Lotus on the grid and a protracted legal battle ensued over the use of the name. This was finally settled only when Tony Fernandes finished the purchase of the Caterham car company and switched to using the "Caterham F1 Team" name in for 2012. The team switched to Renault power for 2011 and ran an unchanged driver line-up, although reserve Karun Chandok did race at the British GP. Results were mixed and again, no points were scored, but the team again finished in 10th place thereby getting FIA prize money for the following season.

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