His cars were lapped twice at Interlagos on Sunday, but Team Lotus boss Tony Fernandes could not hide his smile.
Despite scoring no points all season, the fact Heikki Kovalainen and Jarno Trulli finished the race ahead of their Virgin and HRT rivals yet again finally cemented the team’s tenth-place finish in the 2011 constructors’ championship.
It means Team Lotus, becoming Caterham for 2012, is now what is referred to as a ’Column 1’ team in terms of the income distribution tables in the sport’s Concorde Agreement.
"We’ve gone from earning less than $8 million to $36 million, something in that region," Fernandes told Reuters. "It’s significant. It’s taken two years of hard work, that was our target and now we have something solid to build on. You’ve got to finish 10th for two years in a row to be a Column One team and that’s what we’ve achieved."