Lotus Racing Struggles With The 1Malaysia Concept, Made Worse By Petronas

With Mercedes GP Petronas and Lotus Racing in town, Malaysian F1 fans are understandably ecstatic. After all, without Petronas' sponsorship of the Mercedes GP team and Tony Fernandes' entrepreneurial spirit, Malaysians would not be given the chance to get up close and personal with Mercedes GP's Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg and Nick Heidfeld and Lotus Racing's Jarno Trulli, Heikki Kovalainen and Fairuz Fauzy. Neither would we be able to view the actual Lotus Cosworth T127 race cars, nor would we be shown a street demonstration by Mercedes GP's MGP W01 F1 cars.

When Fernandes conceived the idea of the 1Malaysia F1 Team (1MF1T), which later came to be known as Lotus Racing, he believed that 1MF1T should and would be a concerted Malaysian effort: An F1 team formed by Malaysians, with Malaysians playing a key role in the running of the team; Malaysian companies were expected to sponsor a Malaysian F1 team.

But other than the owners of the team, Lotus Racing is not as Malaysian as we were led to believe: The main characters, the drivers Trulli and Kovalainen, are Italian and Finnish, respectively; The main man behind the scene is Englishman Mike Gascoyne, tasked with the key role of Chief Technical Officer. Fairuz, who has only been involved in pre-season testing till now, has been instructed to take part in the first practice session on Friday, presumably because he is Malaysian? Even so, he will see little actual track action for the rest of the season.

With Malaysian talent limited at this level, drafting in foreign drivers and management is necessary and understandable. What's much less so is Malaysia's national oil company Petronas refusing to support a Malaysian-formed F1 team, choosing instead to sponsor the Mercedes GP team. It is clear that Petronas does not want to be seen on the losing side, week in week out, but unless there is black-and-white stipulation that a company can not sponsor two F1 teams, Petronas has an almost nationalistic obligation to sponsor Lotus Racing.

Other than AirAsia (Tune Group), Naza and Proton which have been on board since the formation of Lotus Racing, the only new Malaysian sponsor is Maxis. Maxis' CEO Sandip Das said it best: “This is the pride of the nation and as a leading telco company, we wanted to be part of this wonderful Malaysia moment”. Now, if only Petronas and other Malaysian companies can learn something from that...