Colin Kolles moves to Lotus sports car program

Since he parted company with HRT a few weeks ago, Colin Kolles has been busy preparing alternative plans for the 2012 season, although he is still entirely possible that he will pop up somewhere in F1 in the course of the next season.

Kolles’s Kodewa has just been named as Lotus’s team in the LMP2 championship, running a Lotus-engined Lola coupe.

The car will run in the Lotus black and gold livery, although the design has been done by Daniel Simon, who liveried the HRT last year.

“This is a very exciting step for us, we made no secret of our intention to tackle LMP2 this year but it had to be done in the right way and we’re very happy with the set up with our partners," said Group Lotus Director of Motorsport Claudio Berro. “More than anything else, we’re looking forward to our return to Le Mans in this capacity after our success with the Evora last year. The engine development is going well but there’s a lot to do over the coming weeks to ensure that the car is prepared for the intensive testing that we must undertake to ensure we’re ready to complete."

Further details regarding drivers will be confirmed shortly. Joe Saward