Lotus announced a partnership with the Royal Air Force (RAF) Bobsleigh Team to repair and redevelop one of its competition sleds. The Lotus bobsleigh project is the perfect opportunity for Lotus to demonstrate their engineering skills and for the RAF Bobsleigh Team to repair and upgrade one of their sleds. A new fiber racing version of a sled is priced around $52,000.
The Lotus bobsleigh will wear a green and gold winter coat, the traditional colors of Lotus, instead of the RAF blue.
“Initially we had a requirement to repair a sled which had sustained significant nose cone damage, a huge body crack in the main chassis itself and multiple other cracks and damage that had been
sustained over the years” said RAF Bobsleigh Team Manager Flight Lieutenant Craig Dickie.
“As an engineer myself and with an understanding of Lotus’ expertise in dealing with composite materials, I approached Lotus Engineering initially to discuss the possibility of them assessing a sled with a view to me paying for any work that needed carrying out.
“Lotus recognised the value of an affiliation between themselves - as an elite car manufacturer
- and an extreme sport like Bobsleigh and this developed into the repair of the project prototype; which so happened to be the worst sled in our inventory.”
The redevelopment of the Lotus bobsleigh took 70 hours and this doesn't seem much when you think that it will run at speeds of 135km/h with Olympic Bobsleigh driver RAF Sergeant Michelle Coy at the controls and Junior Technician Caroline Gray as brakeman.
