Caterham sells Caterham F1

The Caterham Group has today announced the sale of its Formula One team to a consortium of Swiss and Middle-Eastern investors.

Caterham F1 is, you'll recall, the old Team Lotus outfit, established in 2010 by airline mogul Tony Fernandes.

In 2012 - after a deeply confusing naming row with car company Lotus and former Renault F1 outfit - the team was renamed Caterham, following Fernandes' purchase of the Surrey manufacturer.

Group CEO Graham Macdonald, along with Fernandes and Kamarudin Meranun, will continue to run the other Caterham brands, which include Caterham Cars, Caterham Composites, Caterham Technology & Innovation (CTI), and the GP2, Moto2 and Caterham Bikes divisions.

Macdonald said that the Group's ‘core focus' would now turn to launching the upcoming two-seater Caterham car, "a project we will be making more announcements about in due course."

"I want to thank everyone who was involved in the F1 team for all their hard work and dedication since the team's first days in 2009," Macdonald said. "We have now secured an exciting new future for the F1 team that will allow Caterham to remain in Formula One."

On Friday, Fernandes posted on Twitter: "F1 hasn't worked, but love Caterham Cars."

And what of the race team? The new consortium will be advised by former Midland/Spyker boss Colin Kolles, and the team will be run by former Minardi racer Christijan Albers.

"We are aware of the huge challenge ahead of us, given the fight at the bottom end of the table," says Albers. "Our target is now to aim for tenth place in the championship."

Last year, Caterham were beaten to the lucrative tenth spot in the constructors' championship by Marussia. In 2014, drivers Marcus Ericsson and Kamui Kobayashi have failed to score a single point, with Sauber the only other team to remain pointless.