The iconic Lotus name will return to Formula 1 at the season-opening Bahrain GP this weekend with modest ambitions for 2010 but big plans to seize a future World championship.
The Malaysian-backed team, wrapped in green-and-yellow livery to recall the marque's 1960's heydays, has been revived by aviation tycoon Tony Fernandes after a 16-year hiatus.
The team, funded by a public/private partnership that includes a string of Malaysian entrepreneurs, built its T127 car from scratch in only five months.
Fernandes said: "I think we've already accomplished more than anybody could have dreamed. If we continue on this path we will be World champion one day.
"We're not here to be second, we're here to win, but we have to be realistic, we're not going to win next year."
Fernandes, the ebullient founder of Malaysia-based budget carrier AirAsia, is carrying the weight of history on his shoulders. Colin Chapman's original Team Lotus won six Drivers' championships and 73 GP's with drivers such as Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Stirling Moss who was injured in a lift-shaft fall this week.
Fernandes admitted the team would be "competing at the back" in Bahrain "but to make 8500 parts in five months and have a car that, at the moment, is four seconds off the pace - that's amazing when you think we're competing against teams that have been around for 70 or 80 years".
For the 2010 season, "my goal is to try to finish every race and try to be the best new team".
To do that Fernandes will have to beat fellow aviation mogul Richard Branson's Virgin Racing. The two have a typically madcap cross-dressing bet on whose team will win out.
Fernandes explained with a laugh: "If I lose I have to be a stewardess on his aircraft and if he loses he has to be a stewardess on mine. Routes have been picked - he'll do London-Kuala Lumpur or I'll do London-Lagos."
The outspoken tycoon shrugged off scathing comments from Ferrari, which has criticised the sport's decision to allow four new teams on to the grid in 2010 and poured scorn on the rookies' test times.
He said: "It's good when people laugh at you because they don't take you seriously. It doesn't bother me at all, because everybody has to start somewhere."
Fernandes said that, unlike other recent entrants such as Brawn and Force India, which were re-badged versions of established teams, Lotus Racing went from a standing start after winning its franchise in September 2009.
"We've got a much harder job," he said. "We have to do everything from scratch. Brawn, which everybody is raving about, is actually Honda. So our challenge task is much, much bigger."
In fact, Brawn has already switched badges and will compete in 2010 as Mercedes, another works team returning to the sport after a long hiatus.
Fernandes admitted the Lotus had battled hydraulic problems in pre-season testing but said drivers Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen had no complaints about its Cosworth engine.
He said costs were dropping in the glamour sport, a positive trend for a team that has a tiny £40-million (R445-million) annual budget against about £200-million (R2.2-billion) for Ferrari.
"Our timing is perfect," he said. "People are moving towards environmental issues which makes the car more interesting, makes the sport more interesting, and reduces costs.
"It's a fiercely competitive sport - to get half -second you need a lot of work - but with the right attitude and the right people and the way F1 is going, it helps teams such as ours."
Fernandes said that despite F1 tracks mushrooming around the world, the sport needed to do much more to become relevant to audiences outside its core base in Europe.
"F1 will only become a global sport when there are more teams like Lotus." - AFP