Lotus team co-owner Gerard Lopez has hit back at claims the outfit is in financial crisis after reports suggested the team has debts of over £103 million (€120m, $160m).
It’s also been reported that Lotus have struggled to meet Kimi Raikkonen’s salary demands and, for the past few seasons, have made late payments to the Finnish driver.
However Lopez has denied both these claims and believes people have misunderstood their financial accounts.
“On the €120 million debt, anybody half-smart can find out that number by going to Companies House records and will see that out of that, over 90 million is not ‘real’ debt but shareholder loans made to the company,” he told Autosport.
“The salaries have always been paid on time and there has never been even a hint of a potential strike by our people at the factory. We usually don’t comment on these things, but in this case it’s unfair on the people working in the company to be saying things like that.”
The businessman is confident the team has become stronger under Genii Capital ownership, compared to when it was owned by Renault pre-2009.
“When we took over this team, it was eighth in the championship,” he added. “It had a 50% windtunnel, now it’s 60%. The team didn’t have a driver-in-the-loop simulator, it does now. It didn’t have a gearbox dyno, now it has.
“So it has a bunch of things that it didn’t have even as a works team. As they say in other sports, you do your talking on the field and I guess we do our talking on the track.”
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