Lotus F1's £56m loss is Formula 1's biggest in history

The Lotus Formula One team last year recorded the biggest loss of any outfit in motorsport history, according to its latest accounts.

They reveal that in the year ending December 31 2012, the Oxfordshire-based team made a £56.8m after-tax loss due to reversing sponsorship revenues. Its net loss widened by £35.9m as revenue fell 19.8pc to £92.7m.

No other F1 team filing publicly-available accounts has ever lost as much money. The closest is the £46.3m after-tax loss made in 2011 by Marussia, a team which was part-owned by Lloyds Banking Group until earlier this year. The Lotus accounts state that the drop in income was “mainly due to lower sponsorship revenues”.

It is understood that this was driven by Lotus Cars cutting its sponsorship of the team in 2012, even though it still carries its name.

The team is owned by private equity firm Genii Capital, which was founded by Gerard Lopez, an early investor in Skype.

In 2012, the bulk of the loss was covered by a £42.2m group loan which is due to be repaid by the end of the year. Proton, the Malaysian manufacturer which owns Lotus Cars, also gave the team an estimated £35m loan which is secured on its factory. This left the team with net debt of £79.8m and drove its shareholders’ deficit to £54.2m.

Mr Lopez recently admitted that Genii had sold a 2pc stake in Lotus F1 to property tycoon Andrew Ruhan, who joined the board of the team in February.

He isn’t the only new arrival. During 2012, the team hired 20 new staff, giving it a total of 520 employees. Lotus also took on former F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen and, according to the accounts, higher payments to drivers fueled a 9.1 pc rise in costs to £146.6m.

Raikkonen made an immediate impact and the team finished fourth in the 2012 standings, up from fifth the previous year.

However, a question mark hangs over his future as he recently revealed that his contract with Lotus expires at the end of the year and has not yet been renewed.