Eric Bouliier - We convinced Kimi to come back to Formula One

Eric, the announcement of Kimi Räikkönen’s return to Formula 1 with LRGP is big news for the team and for F1 in general…

It is good news for the sport and of course it is good news for the team. Strategically, it is good to have a big name, a high class driver and Formula 1 World Champion to join us. He is committed to racing for us and he is definitely a very good character with the experience he has from driving for McLaren and Ferrari. Also, to have someone like Kimi signing with us shows that the package we have offered was good enough - we convinced Kimi to come back to Formula 1!

Eric Boullier, Team Principal, Lotus Renault GP

Photo by: xpb.cc

There is only about 6 days of testing available per driver during the winter season – how will the team help get Kimi ready for the 2012 season?

First of all, in not so long we will have our simulator ready – this is good news for him and for us. I think that we will also be able to plan a couple of days with the demo car.

Today’s announcement is a real statement of intent from the team and its ambitions for the future?

There are many things that the team will announce soon, in the coming weeks and the coming months. Let’s not forget that the team’s current identity is only a couple of years old and it is clear that we have made some strategic investments like the wind tunnel, like the CFD pole and like the building of the simulator– it will be a state of the art simulator.

We are also in the process to reinforce our team with the recruitment of some key people, some of them have already joined us and some are to be announced soon but we can’t say too much at this stage as some of them are currently on gardening leave.

Next year, we will also have an upgrade of our facilities trackside, in fact it is going to be a complete change with a new engineers truck, a new infrastructure for the team garage, which of course will also have an impact on our image and obviously Kimi joining us is a big step in reinforcing the investment Genii Capital is putting in the team at every level.