The name change game

This is part 2 of my F1 2012 season preview. With 12 F1 teams in the 2012 season they are all vying to improve and succeed in their aims and objectives. To do this, a number of them have changed their names. So now, if you happen to type in their 2011 team name, you will be looking backwards and not in the present time.

Here I outline the name changes and why those names have changed.

(c) Caterham F1 Team

The most controversial change has been to 2 teams, who got into a spot of bother. The 2011 named Lotus Renault GP and Team Lotus team’s confused the world. Who was who? We had to remember Green meant TEAM Lotus and Black/Gold meant Lotus RENAULT GP. This came to an end when Tony Fernandes’s squad (the green one) were told they had to change their name because the court judged that the Group Lotus backed Lotus Renault GP were the true holders of the Lotus name. This meant that Tony Fernandes, who had just brought the Caterham Car Company, had to change his teams name to Caterham F1 Team. The Lotus F1 Team dropped the Renault name as it took full control of their team.

(c) Williams F1 Team

Williams have officially changed their name, in 2012, to Williams-Renault F1 Team as it rekindled its F1 romance with its previous engine supplier Renault. The team also dropped their title sponsor AT&T which dropped out of the team’s official logo. The team last had the Renault tag in 1997 before it was taken away, due to Renault leaving F1 all together. This left Williams using Mecachrome engines. 15 years or so later their relationship in F1 has re-ignited in the hope it can push the team forward from their awful 2012 campaign.

(c) Sahara Force India F1 Team

Force India became the Sahara Force India F1 Team after the Indian Sahara group purchased a 42.5& stake in the team. This was valued at $100million and gives the Sahara group an equal share of the team with Vijay Mallya, team principal. The Force India team have been involved in F1 since 2008 when it took over the Spyker team.

The 2011 Marussia Virgin Racing became the Marussia F1 Team after the Russian sports car manufacturer increased its ownership of the team. It also means that the "Virgin" part of the name will be dropped, part of the original team name.

(c) Marussia F1 Team

The Mercedes F1 Team also changed its name, adding the “AMG” tag to it to create the Mercedes AMG F1 Team. AMG is the car firm’s sports car performance brand. It is not a major change and seems just partly to associate the team with their performance heritage from Mercedes.  


Hope that helps outline the F1 Team name changes ahead of the F1 2012 season.