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Am i the only one who really likes the look of the car?

What bothers me more than the looks though, is the fact that the car seems to be a dog (Dixon's words). I don't wanna start a debate now, but I don't remember anybody saying the DP-01 was slow or a handfull in the first tests, and that wasn't the best of cars.

I don't like them. But I'm hopefull that liveries will make the car look better.

What bothers me more than the looks though, is the fact that the car seems to be a dog (Dixon's words). I don't wanna start a debate now, but I don't remember anybody saying the DP-01 was slow or a handfull in the first tests, and that wasn't the best of cars.

It's the first year of the new chassis. The original car went through limited testing in one person's hands before it went into mass production. The previous car had been developed over many years so it's only natural something new feels different and unconventional right now. There's a huge amount of development to come and that's even before the teams are allowed to start building there own parts in house. So in time the drivers will be able to find a suitable set up to feel comfortable in the car.

Some guy commenting on SPEEDtv.com, apparently was at Palm Beach and says that engineers claimed that all Lotus cars will use black and gold livery, but Simona who will use the white/light green livery from last year.

Anyone has any info on this?

For Simona’s car, due to existing contractual requirements, it will stay in its current green and white colors, with a Lotus theme added to it with their green and yellow. We probably would have announced Lotus at least six weeks earlier, but we had to sort through the car colors! They wanted black and gold on everything, but those [colors] didn’t mesh with the needs of our sponsor Nuclear Clean Air Energy and so on. We have to respect that, so we’ve come up with a package that’s bloody nice. We’ll have more green on the front of the car and fade it to the other green at the back and yellow lines running down the top. I think it will look quite nice.

The car still suffers from an extreme rear weight bias and is reportedly tricky to drive on high-speed ovals. But, as Indy car legend Rick Mears wondered, what's wrong with that?

"So it's not planted and completely stable," Mears said. "Haven't we been complaining that the outgoing car was too planted and stable? That my ex-wife's mother-in-law could jump in one and keep up with the pack?

"The new car really brings the teams back into the equation in a big way," Mears continued. "Some of these teams have never gone through the hard work of developing a new car. You can call it teething troubles or new car blues or whatever. We used to experience it all the time when we brought out a new car every year. The biggest teams aren't always going to be the ones that get it right and there could be some surprising results.

"It's going to shake things up and make IndyCar a lot more interesting."