Lotus ‘hoping to break even’

Editor

After years of speculation about their finances, Lotus CEO Matthew Carter insists the F1 team has "turned a corner".

Over the past few years Lotus have been dogged by rumours – many of which have been based in truth – about their financial situation.

In 2013 it was so dire that it led to the team losing Kimi Raikkonen as the driver gave into his frustrations over late payments. He even sat out the final two races of that season.

Lotus, though, pulled over and, according to Autosport, are 'expected to show a gross profit for the first time in many years.'

Speaking to Autosport, Carter said: "I came in and there was a huge deficit in terms of income and expenditure.

"We did some pretty hardcore cost cutting, laying off a number of people, making a lot of redundancies, and then it was about cutting costs everywhere we could, and it worked.

"We were hoping to break even, but there are still some arguments about stock and bits and pieces with the auditors (KPMG), but it is probably where we will end up, that sort of figure."

The CEO is now confident that Lotus are getting back on track as they recover from past mistakes.

"In reality we probably went too far last year, cut a few too many heads," he went on to say.

"With hindsight, looking back, we were a little short on the race team last year, so we didn't have a chief race engineer.

"We also got carried away in aerodynamics and the design office as well, so gradually over the winter we've restocked people back into those.

"We also made sure we picked up our graduate scheme. In previous years under Renault we had a pretty good graduate scheme, brought some graduates through.

"We probably lost our way a bit with that over 2011/12/13, but we've reintroduced that and we are now picking up some really good young engineers, some good aerodynamicists.

"From my point of view they don't cost the same as the established people, so it's about bringing people through and keeping control of costs."