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According to Colin Chapman, the plural of Lotus (the cars at least) is Lotus. Otherwise Lotus is more usually connected to another word which makes plural forms easier. eg Lotus plants, Lotus eaters, Lotus Elans.

Why would you put such a heavy PoS in a Lotus? I've thought of putting a worked fwd SR20 in an Elise but I don't know if it would be better than a Honda K20A. What about an Elise with a Viper V10:

Lotus at play. The two superlap Lotuses spent last weekend at Eastern Creek competing in the GT Championship. The yellow one set a new racing lap record in of 1:33.45. The blue one (with Scott Bargwana at the wheel) did a qualifying time of 1:34.43. Here they are going at it for 12 laps against each other as well as a bunch of Lambos, Ferraris, Aston Martins and some German cars that were so slow you wouldn't know they were even there: http://idisk.mac.com/demackie-Public/GTEC08Race3.wmv Note: vid runs just over 20 minutes and the file size is 108Mb

Yes.

Personally I think making it a 2 day event is silly. All it will do is double the cost of running the event.

On the whole I agree that it was a good day and I hope it does encourage mpre people to get on the track in an organised way and improve driving standards. The level of marshalling does need to increase to be more like a proper supersrint at least or the organisers could find themselves in serious trouble. I didn't notice any calls for officials on any forums. I'm sure a few extra experienced track and flag marshalls could have been recruited from CAMS clubs. I know a few who would have been happy to do it. That QSR RX-7 and the Fast Fours project S15 were sharing our pit garage. That RX-7 was stupid loud and left a nice puddle of oil in the garage when it went out for its final run. It was clear that those guys had SFA knowledge or experience at the race track and were very unprepared. I believe that the S2000 should have been on the open class on the basis that it had forced induction (not trying to take anything away from JBs brilliant driving). If you could buy a turbo/supercharged S2000 from a Honda dealer then I'd be happy for it to be in the clubsprint class. It would be nice to see some more Eurotrash and Aussie cars amongst the field. I'm sure that if the concept takes off then they will come. I may be wrong, but it looked like some of the vendors weren't getting a lot of trade so I'm not sure how worthwhile they thought it was. Perhaps the final battle needs to be more like the shoot out used at Bathurst with only 1 car on track at a time. That would prevent the controversy at the end of the day when Tim in the Elise was robbed (or given an unfair chance depending on your point of view). Conspiracy time; Would the protest have been upheld if Tim had been in a Jap car

Spectator entry is $15, kids under 14(?) free. I'd expect first cars on the track by 9.30. Word of advice: take a seat or blanket unless you intend to sit up in the grandstand.

My money is on the little plastic cars rather than all of the lard-arse metal ones. But I'm biased.

The Yellow Exige was hand timed at one stage at 1:05s. He has done 1:04s. The red Exige is an easy couple of seconds per lap quicker again. At Eastern Creek those two cars are capable of 1:46 and 1:36 respectively.

Not necessarily. The Lotus has less than 105kw at the flywheel which is about the same as a CA18DE (135ps). It's big advantage is lower weight. According to the sales brochure, an S13 with CA18DE weighs 1090kg which is more than 300kg heavier than the Lotus. The Lotus would also have been coming out of turn 12 at least 10km/h faster thanks to lower weight, wider tyres and better factory suspension set-up.

I wish I was doing those times. According to my lap timer my FTD was 1.55.34 which was also a personal Best at EC. The car pretty much hits terminal velocity of 200km/h. If I'd improved the aerodynamics by putting the roof on I might have gotten an extra 5km/h or so out of it and broken into the 1.54s. I was impressed seeing the R34 going into turn 1 at about 200km/h without using the brakes (just before the tyre shat itself). The only other car I noticed not using the brakes there was the Ralliart Colt.

And I thought the R34 was exhausted from the effort of getting past 89kw of raw Lotus power. For those of us doing Grip sessions it certainly was a great day with lots of track time. This certainly was great for participants but a shame for IDA and their bank balance.

I've been considering Stageas (among other things) for a "new" car but I've only seen autos. Are they available in Manual?

I was surprised to see this pop up on Autoweek overnight: Nissan’s NISMO folks are launching the craziest version of the mighty R34 Skyline GT-R, the Z-tune. Z-tune features 500 hp and 400 lb-ft of torque from a totally reworked 2.8-liter race-bred engine (up from a 2.6-liter). Other modifications include carbon fiber front bumper, bonnet, front guards and chassis reinforcements. We hear they’re building only 20 of these for worldwide sale and they go on sale Dec. 20 for US$166,000.