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Race Recap: 2013 Bahrain Grand Prix follows the template of this year and last [spoilers]

The sand, the wind, the penalties, the contact and the one crash - all of them collided to make the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix a surprise affair from day to day and lap to lap. Oh, and did we mention the tires? Pirelli made a last-minute swap after the amusement park ride that the Chinese Grand Prix turned into with the soft compound tire, and brought medium and hard compounds to the desert. That didn't stop things from falling apart for some teams - literally - and that didn't stop the one team that seems to love the hard compound Pirelli tire.

New Lotus owners ditch ambitious five-year plan

This didn't take long. The new overlords at Lotus have reportedly scrapped the company's five-year plan. DRB-Hicom ditched the turnaround strategy, penned by ousted CEO Danny Bahar, because it believes the market viewed the plan as overly ambitious.
The new product plan will slim the number of new model lines from five to three, and Lotus will likely slash the number planned consultants in favor of relying more heavily on in-house talent. According to The Star, the move should help expedite product development and save cash at the same time.
Even so, nothing is written in stone as of yet. DRB-Hicom says the new plan will take up to a year to finalize. The company has dumped around $242 million into Lotus so far this year, and the struggling automaker may require another $121 million by 2013. Lotus all but stopped production earlier this year during a loan freeze, but the lights came back on in April. The company now produces around 44 vehicles per week.

eBay Find of the Day: 2000 Lotus 340R, claimed only street-legal example in US

These days most of the news out of Lotus comes when it releases a lighter or faster version of the Elise, Exige or Evora. However, the stripped-out, Elise-based 340R might already show the logical conclusion of that concept, despite coming out in 2000. Now, one of the 340 made is up for auction on eBay Motors, and the seller in Fort Lauderdale, FL, claims that it's the only street-legal example available in the US.
Lotus founder Colin Chapman always had an obsession with making his vehicles as light as possible, and the 340R adhered to that adage about as closely as a street car could in 2000. These minimalist roadsters eschewed opening doors, windows and a roof in the pursuit of cutting the fat off the brand's hardly portly Elise. The company's engineers also trimmed away the fenders to give their creation a semi-open wheel design that looked as wild when new as today. For the interior, they installed two racing buckets, and the most of the rest was left in bare metal, including the pedals. All of the changes reportedly brought the 340R down to around 1,545 pounds.
Power comes from a 1.8-liter four-cylinder with a five-speed manual gearbox. The 340R is available with 177 horsepower or a tuned 187-hp version from that mill, but the seller doesn't specify which one this is. It's still a pretty fresh car, though, with just 3,577 miles claimed on the odometer.