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Lotus hands Pastor Maldonado a new Evora S in Monaco

Being a Formula One driver has its privileges. First off, you get to drive F1 cars for a living. You get treated like royalty and fly around the world. And if you're lucky, you might get a supercar thrown at you once in a while. It all depends on which team you drive for.
Fernando Alonso, for example, has had countless Ferraris, Maseratis, Abarths and Jeeps thrown his way. Lewis Hamilton was a little disappointed not to get the keys to that rare McLaren F1 LM when he won the championship. But Pastor Maldonado just got his hands on a new Lotus Evora S.
Pastor who now, you ask? Pastor Maldonado. The first Venezuelan driver in F1, Maldonado won the GP2 title in 2010 then made the jump to F1, driving for Williams for the past three seasons, impressively winning the Spanish Grand Prix in 2012. Now he's at Lotus filling Kimi Raikkonen's seat, and took delivery of his white Evora - complete with 3.5-liter supercharged V6 and six-speed sequential gearbox - in Monte Carlo last weekend during the Monaco Grand Prix.

Lotus to move immediately forward with new variants rather than new models

It took 1.5 years, but a DRB-Hicom managing director told Malaysia's Business Times that the company has "cleaned up" the situation at Lotus from its finances to its marketing and image. The clean-up job we're most interested in, the product portfolio, will be demonstrated by financial investment in a three-year program of "variants based on existing products - variants with improved technology, improved performance."
You'll notice mention of the word "variants" three times but no mention of the phrase "new models." We knew that with the death of the five-new-model turnaround plan dreamed up by ex-Lotus CEO Dany Bahar DRB-Hicom said there'd only be three distinct lines - which is the current number - but during Lotus' trouble-plagued 2012 it sold just 80 cars all year, and for a tense spell it really wasn't clear if DRB-Hicom would commit to even keeping Lotus alive, much less investing in it.
It's not clear how much is being put into in the three-year program of offshoot models like the 345-horsepower Exige S Roadster (pictured), but it might be fair to say this is where Lotus' revival really begins, and does so with baby steps. Autocar reports that DRB-Hicom has already put 100 million pounds into the English carmaker, and as its issues were worked through Lotus has sold almost as many cars in the first five months of this year as it did all of last. That has not only convinced the Malaysian minders to throw more money its way, but the UK's business secretary has also approved a 10-million-pound investment into Lotus through the Regional Growth Facility program.

Lotus drops Renault for Mercedes F1 engines

With only three manufacturers supplying engines in Formula One this season, the teams have been fairly evenly split: Ferrari, Sauber and Marussia use Ferrari engines; Mercedes, McLaren, Williams and Force India run on Mercedes power; Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Lotus and Caterham employ Renault power units. But one important team is reportedly preparing to ditch Renault and switch to Mercedes for next year.
That team is Lotus, an outfit which has fallen off its pace the past few seasons but which has still been a vital partner for Renault. That's because until a few seasons ago, the team based in Enstone, UK, was owned by Renault and bore the company's name. The operation was founded in 1981 as Toleman, was rechristened Benetton in 1986, bought by Renault 2000, taking the company's name in 2002, sold to its current owners Genii Capital 2009 and adopting the black and gold Lotus livery in 2011. As Benetton, it ran Ford engines until switching to Renault in 1995, sticking with the French outfit ever since, but that decades-long partnership - which meandered through Renault ownership and back out again - is now apparently drawing to a close.
The departure of Lotus as a customer team ought to allow Renault to focus instead on its increasing ties with Red Bull, which has taken the Enstone team's place as Renault's principal team. It could prove a smart move for the Lotus team as well, as the Mercedes engines have been outperforming the Renault units this season by an order of magnitude: not only is Mercedes far outpacing Red Bull at the top of the standings, but each of Mercedes' customer teams is performing better than Renault's clients.