The Royal Air Force Bobsleigh Team Joins Forces With Lotus

The Royal Air Force Bobsleigh Team Joins Forces with Lotus

In a major first for the Royal Air Force (RAF) Bobsleigh Team, they have joined forces with

Lotus Cars who have been commissioned to repair and refurbish one of the sleds from the

RAF Bobsleigh Team.

With the Inter-Services Ice Championships for 2008, being held at the 1200 metre

Innsbruck/Igls Olympic Bobsleigh track in Austria, the Team are taking the opportunity to

test Lotus' engineering skills by running this newly refurbished sled on the track.

"Initially we had a requirement to repair a sled which had sustained significant nose cone

damage, a huge body crack in the main chassis itself and multiple other cracks and

damage that had been sustained over the years" said Bobsleigh Team Manger Flight

Lieutenant Craig Dickie. "As an engineer myself and with an understanding of Lotus'

expertise in dealing with composite materials, I approached their engineering department

initially to discuss the possibility of them assessing a sled with a view to me paying for any

work that needed carrying out. Lotus recognised the value of an affiliation between

themselves as an elite car manufacturer and an extreme sport like Bobsleigh and this

developed into the repair of the project prototype; which so happened to be the worst sled

in our inventory."

The result was a generous 70 plus hours of engineering time dedicated to repairing the

sled and preparing it for the extreme conditions of competitive Bobsleigh. For Lotus it was

an ideal opportunity for them to demonstrate their state-of-the-art engineering skills; Mike

Kimberley, Chief Executive for Group Lotus Plc is very enthusiastic about the association,

"When the RAF Bobsleigh Team approached us, we were immediately grabbed by thevery clear association between our high performing, exciting and high technology sports

cars, advanced RAF aerospace engineering and the exciting and extreme sport of

Bobsleigh. We are regarded as a world leader in composite research, development and

manufacture and we are delighted to be given the opportunity to demonstrate our skills

outside the car industry. The advanced composites repairs have been done to an

extremely high quality, keeping weight to a minimum and are another example of our skills

and the resulting Sled has been returned to the RAF as good as new."

Shooting by at 85 MPH with Olympic Bobsleigh driver RAF Sergeant Michelle Coy at the

controls and Junior Technician Caroline Gray as brakeman, it was hard to imagine that just

a few months ago the sled's condition had been assessed as a safety hazard, with little

hope of it being restored to use without significant funds being diverted from more pressing

priorities. With the cost of buying a new sled ranging from £11,000 for a training sled to

£25,000 for a top-of-the-range carbon fibre racing version, the benefits of working with

Lotus are obvious.

Now all that is left to be seen is whether the new sled will carry the RAF team to victory

against their Service rivals in this week's Inter-Service competition which are due to

conclude on Friday 29th February.