My New Year resolutions for this new year include a lot more track time and many more motorsport events. The LoTRDC 2011 Race Calendar provides a few entries for my diary in 2011.

Having got Gran Turismo 5 for Christmas (well my son did!) on the PS3, I've spent a few days playing with it. It is a superb racing car game and a big leap forward over GT4 on my PS2. My favourite car in my garage is my Alpine White Lotus Evora, which now has 439bhp, titanium race exhaust, race LDS, soft-compound race tyres and perhaps the most essential racing item, a close-ratio gearbox. I would just SO like to drive this car for real!

Only ordered my set of four Yokohama A048's yesterday but they turned up today! All I need to do now is find someone local that I can trust to fit them properly.

Article on Midlands police force new patrol car. A Lotus Evora. Nice! It is it was purely for demonstration at shows and not for normal patrol usage though.

Don't know what was going on today but, there was a whole set of announcements about some very interesting cars:

Caterham announced their new track car and the first new model for ages. Possibility ofthis being available in road-going form too. Articles on The Telegraph and Autocar.

There was also an announcement on the new Ariel Atom and the Radical SR3 SL. In my opinion, this is the kind of market Lotus needs to be in too. The 2-11 is a step in the right direction but if you are going to get involved in F1, then you need to have a car like this too.

Incidently, this is about the only kind of car I would replace my Fisher Fury R1 with. Something less than 600Kg and more than 350bhp. In an ideal world it would be a single seater with weighing less than 500Kg and with more than 500bhp though . Not even sure such a thing exists though.

It's my birthday very soon. As a treat to myself, I've booked a factory tour at Team Lotus. As Lotus is very well represented in F1 this year, I plan to also visit the other team too as soon as I can. Decided to ignore the politics of Lotus in F1 this year and just support both teams.

The Lotus F1 name issue makes it into the mainstream new on the BBC News website

Looks like the Lotus Trim Shop up at the Hethel factory has finally closed. It's been threatened many times before :-(

As Group Lotus move up market with a whole new range of cars, it looks like the S1 Elise may be sold off for continued production by a company like Caterham. The rumours suggest that there may be many other bidders for the rights to manufacture the car though. This will be fantastic news if it happens.