Lotus will use Red Bull gearboxes and hydraulic systems from the 2011 season, the new Malaysian-backed team announced on Tuesday morning.

It is expected the team, to be called Team Lotus next season, will also shortly announce an agreement to use Renault’s customer engine in 2011.

The news will mean Lotus and Red Bull will use the same engine/gearbox/hydraulics package in formula one, which according to team boss Tony Fernandes is a “real statement of our intention”.

A media statement said the deal is for 2011 “and beyond”.

Lotus has expressed misgivings with its Xtrac gearbox and hydraulics during its debut season this year, and has already terminated its engine contract with Cosworth.

“This deal gives our design and aero teams a very exciting platform to work with,” said technical boss Mike Gascoyne.

It is the first time Red Bull has supplied a gearbox to a customer team.

“The fact that Red Bull Technology has been chosen to be a supplier to another team despite its short history demonstrates how much we have achieved since our first season,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner.

Jun.16 (GMM)  Ross Brawn claims he was mistranslated in suggesting Mercedes should not supply engines to Red Bull next year.

The Italian magazine Autosprint quoted Brawn, Mercedes GP’s team principal, as saying the German marque should think “long and hard” before adding another customer team to its 2011 stable.

The comments were interpreted as Brawn not wanting the best engine in the field to be mated to Red Bull’s arguably best chassis.

“I was asked by an Italian journalist whether Mercedes could cope with a fourth team,” Brawn explained to Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.

“I replied that Cosworth should supply any vacancies, because that’s the way it was planned by the FIA — that they (Cosworth) should be in business so that in an emergency there is not the reliance on the manufacturers.

“In the translation from Italian into English someone has added one and one together and come up with Red Bull.”

However, competition director Norbert Haug told German reporters in Turkey that it would be “definitely very difficult” for Mercedes to supply a fourth team with engines in 2011.

Rather than bracing to lose a customer, Cosworth says it is ready to supply engines to a fifth formula one team next year.

The British marque’s business director Mark Gallagher played down recent reports that the currently Cosworth-powered Williams or Lotus could be moving to switch to Renault.

Renault has said it is willing to add to its customer engine roster for 2011, but Gallagher told Reuters that he thinks Williams, Lotus, Virgin and HRT are going nowhere.

“The obvious solution is actually the thirteenth team that is coming into formula one,” he said.

“My gut feeling is that it is probably a Cosworth/Renault competition to supply (that) team,” added Gallagher.

Even if the four Cosworth-powered teams all stay put, Gallagher said the Northampton-based supplier has the capacity to supply a fifth team.

“It certainly wouldn’t be a problem to step up to the mark again and do it for next season,” he said.

(GMM)

May 4 (GMM)  Jean Todt on Tuesday said the FIA is pushing for the energy-recovery technology KERS to be redeployed in formula one next year.

While the regenerative braking energy systems will surely be part of the sport’s new engine formula for 2013, it has been reported that some teams want KERS back on the grid as soon as next season.

Currently allowed by the technical regulations, the F1 teams group FOTA agreed to voluntarily ban KERS this year after only some teams ran the systems in 2009 with mixed results.

Ferrari, Renault and Williams are at the forefront of the new push to see KERS back in F1 in 2011, and FIA president Todt admitted on Tuesday that the governing body is also “very serious” about the return of the technology as soon as possible.

According to the Associated Press, the Frenchman said on a visit to Spain that KERS is important so that F1 can be “an ambassador to new technologies”.

It is also reported on Tuesday that Flybrid Systems, a British company set up in 2007 by former Renault F1 engineers, has made an offer to FOTA to become an independent supplier of KERS systems in 2011.

Ferrari and Renault have also offered to make available their KERS units to customer teams for 1 million euros, while Williams intends to use its own flywheel-based system.

The matter will be further discussed by FOTA in Barcelona this week.

May 3 (GMM)  Toro Rosso might have employed a “more cautious approach” in 2010 than F1′s other Ferrari powered teams.

So far this season, several Maranello-built V8s have suffered problems during the grand prix weekends, both in the rear of the works cars and also those of the customer team Sauber.

But with a much cleaner bill of engine health in 2010 so far is Toro Rosso, the Faenza based team that has been using Ferrari power for the past four years.

“It is possible that we have adopted a more cautious approach in the way we manage the engines,” team boss Franz Tost said on Monday.

“This does not mean we can afford to be complacent as engine failures are always a possibility,” he added.