The long awaited Lotus Exige R-GT has received its starters orders from the FIA and makes its competition debut this weekend at Round 7 of the European Rally Championship in Madeira, Portugal.
The FIA has homologated the car ready for competition and it is the first car to pass the FIA R-GT regulations.
The car will be raced by the works Lotus International Rally Team crew of Bernardo Sousa and co-driver Corrado Mancini.
The team tested this all new category car for the last five months and recorded vital miles as the course car during last month’s Geko Ypres Rally in Belgium. Sousa, being Portuguese, is racing the Exige in anger for the first time on home turf. The 25-year-old is one of the most promising young rally drivers.
The priorities in Madeira will be reliability and further fine-tuning of the car during the punishing schedule of a rally weekend.
For Lotus, it’s a historic return to a sport in which the marque has appeared in the past with great success. Lotus won the World Rally Championship with the Lotus Talbot Sunbeam back in 1981.
Claudio Berro, Director of Lotus Racing: “This is a very exciting week for us. It’s been a long time coming because the R-GT category is new, and it’s taken time for the rules to be written and, in turn, the car to comply with the regulations. Nonetheless, the process on our side has been smooth and the development of the car is really promising. We go to Portugal with realistic aims, primarily to work on reliability and performance, but it’s going to be great to experience competition. This is the first car to be homologated by the FIA for R-GT. The R-GT class will make rallying more appealing and thrilling than ever, and the acclaimed Exige will earn a huge following I’m sure.”
