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Lotus: We'll take fourth place

Jerez, Spaid - Lotus set Kimi Raikkonen a clear target of taking the former Renault team to fourth place in the Formula 1 championship in his comeback season.

Champions Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes all finished above former champions Renault last year but Lotus team co-owner Gerard Lopez said beating one of them was a realistic aim.

Lopez said: "The hopes are to have a strong car, strong drivers, of which one of them is obviously an ex-world champion.

"Then you have to bring the car up to the front of the pack, probably trying to aim for fourth as a reasonable goal for this season," he said.

Raikkonen has not raced in Formula 1 since 2009, when he left Ferrari to make way for double champion Fernando Alonso and embark on a new life in rallying.

Raikkonen, triumphant in 18 Grands Prix with McLaren and Ferrari and 2007 title winner with the Italian team, is one of an unprecedented six champions together on the starting grid this year.

His team mate is French driver Romain Grosjean, the GP2 champion who started seven races for Renault in 2009 without scoring a point.

PRETTY NORMAL

Raikkonen said: "I am happy to be back. It will be something slightly different than it used to be when I was in F1 with a different team. A little bit different regulations but everybody's different. Some people have more difficulties in getting used to new stuff.

"It depends a lot on the car. If you have a good car it makes life much easier than if you have an average one. I was pretty happy after the first test we did a few weeks ago and it felt pretty normal already," added Raikkonen, who drove a two-year-old car at Valencia in January 2012.

The new black and gold E20 is named after the team's Enstone factory as the 20th car the workforce have built there going back to the days of Toleman, Benetton and Renault.

Both Benetton and Renault won titles, the latter in 2005 and 2006 with Alonso.

The first chassis from Enstone made under the Lotus name had the distinctive stepped nose seen on all the cars launched so far, with the exception of McLaren. There was also new sponsorship from Unilever brands Rexona and Clear.

It will be fired before the first pre-season test starts at the Jerez circuit in southern Spain.

Raikkonen said: "The people (here) know how to build a good car and even the biggest teams cannot produce every year the winning car...they are very capable people and have a good feeling of things and are pushing hard so hopefully we get good results."

Renault were just four points ahead of sixth-placed Force India 2011, with Vitaly Petrov and Bruno Senna replacing Nick Heidfeld for the latter half of the championship.
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