The Lotus team confirmed Heikki Kovalainen for the last two races of the year this morning Texas time after Caterham gave the go ahead.

No racing team ever does anything for nothing, if there is something it wants in exchange and I hear that there was a quid pro quo with Lotus agreeing to release a couple of engineering “prisoners” as part of the deal. Lotus CFD engineers Paul Cusdin and James Crook were on their way to Caterham, but Lotus was insisting on periods of “gardening leave” – which is the normal way of doing things in F1. It seems that in exchange for releasing Heikki, Lotus agreed to let them go early. Lotus has been badly hit by engineering defections in recent months because of fears about the team’s financial future. The two CFD engineers follow Lotus CFD head Jarrod Murphy out of the door at Enstone. Murphy departed some months ago to join Mercedes. Cusdin has been at Lotus since 2005 when he joined the team from Southampton University, while Crook joined from Cambridge in 2010.

One of the other reasons that Kovalainen was chosen by Lotus was because of the race engineering staff. Mark Slade has been engineering Kimi Raikkonen this year but cut his teeth at McLaren between 1991 and 2010, during his time there he acted as race engineer for Kovalainen in 2008 and 2009, so there is no need for any learning period as the two know how the other works.