The Lotus E22 is a Formula One racing car designed by Lotus to compete in the 2014 Formula One season. The chassis was designed by Nick Chester, Chris Cooney, Martin Tolliday, Daniele Casanova and Nicolas Hennel with Renault supplying the team's powertrain. It was driven by Romain Grosjean and Pastor Maldonado, who replaced Kimi Räikkönen after Räikkönen left the team to rejoin Ferrari. The E22 was designed to use Renault's new 1.6-litre V6 turbocharged engine, the Energy F1-2014. This was the last car of the Enstone-based team which used Renault engines until Renault RS16, before a new one-year deal with fellow Daimler brand Mercedes.
Design The E22 had a "tusk" style nosecone design; with a short tusk on the left side and longer tusk on the right side.
Season summary
The team was forced to miss the first pre-season test at Jerez de la Frontera, but released computer-rendered images of the car in the week beforehand, showing a distinctive asymmetrical forked nose design. After disappointing results in the first few races, the car picked up pace when the season came to Europe, with Romain Grosjean qualifying fifth and coming home in eighth position at the . Lotus nevertheless struggled to earn points throughout the season, with only two more point-scoring finishes at Monaco for Grosjean and in the United States for Maldonado. The team would admit that a fundamental design flaw on the chassis was hugely responsible for the poor performance during the season. Also in the United States the team tried a different nose design in FP1 similar to the E23 but then they stopped the development of the car relatively early to concentrate on the E23 chassis after developments on the troublesome car brought no improvements to its performance. Therefore, Lotus ended the season a disappointing eighth in the Constructors' Championship standings, compared to fourth in and ended up no podiums for the first time since season when it was named Renault.
Complete Formula One results (key) Year Entrant Engine Tyres Drivers Grands Prix Points AUS MAL BHR CHN ESP MON CAN AUT GBR GER HUN BEL ITA SIN JPN RUS USA BRA ABU‡ Lotus F1 Team Renault Energy F1-2014 Romain Grosjean Ret 11 12 Ret 8 8 Ret 14 12 Ret Ret Ret 16 13 15 17 11 17 13 10 8th Pastor Maldonado Ret Ret 14 14 15 DNS Ret 12 17 12 13 Ret 14 12 16 18 9 12 Ret † — Driver failed to finish the race, but was classified as they had completed greater than 90% of the race distance. ‡ — Teams and drivers scored double points at the .
References