Lotus F1 team claims it will post reduced losses this year

According to accounts lodged by Lotus F1 at Companies House, the team made losses of £64.9 million during 2013 and £55.3 million in 2012.

But substantial cuts in expenditure, driven by new CEO Matthew Carter, have reduced the losses over the first six months of this year to "about six million".

Carter says that figures prepared internally indicate a loss of £823,000 prior to depreciation, interest and exceptional costs being taken into account.

These additions include payments of around £1.6 million for staff redundancies at the start of the year, taking the overall figure to the region of six million.

"It's obviously a step in the right direction in terms of where we are in terms of being a financially sustainable business," Carter told AUTOSPORT.

"The reason I was brought in was to look at things from a business point of view as opposed to an F1 and a sport point of view as we needed to re-evaluate income versus expenditure.

"We are not short of sponsors by any stretch of the imagination, so it wasn't as tricky a job [as might be expected], but in F1 things sometimes get a little bit out of hand and people are always chasing the extra seconds."

CUTS NOT TO BLAME FOR POOR SEASON

Lotus lies eighth in the constructors' championship and has scored only eight points, with little chance of improving on that position.

But Carter does not believe that the cuts required to get the team onto more stable financial footing have harmed its long-term competitiveness.

"We are still 470 people in Enstone, so we are still a substantial size," said Carter.

"On track, it's easy to blame Renault for everything, which is not the case, but obviously we were at a massive disadvantage at the start of the season.

"Being brutally honest, we have not been as good in terms of our aerodynamic development during the season as we should have been.

"Ultimately, we started off behind and never really caught up."

Finishing four places lower in the constructors' championship will have financial implications for the team's FOM money in 2015.

But Carter is confident that the team can make up for the shortfall in other areas.

"We got our sponsors on side and our sponsors are committed long-term," he said.

"We have managed, in terms of our budget and the way that we have accounted for things to plug the gap of the FOM money we're not going to get.

"Assuming performance is better next year, which I fully believe it will be, we should be OK going forward."