Lotus F1 CEO Matthew Carter says he still doesn’t know when the planned takeover by Renault will be finalised.

After Suzuka both sides announced that a letter of intent had been signed, but cautioned that the deal would only go through if certain conditions were met.

“I honestly don’t know,” Carter told this writer when asked about the likely time scale. “We’re working on things. It’s clear that all the parties involved want to get this resolved as quickly as possible, and we’ll work thing through as quickly as we can.

“It’s the same for us anyway, it really doesn’t make a helluva lot of difference. We get on with doing our job on the race track. We’ve been confident for a long time that things are going to be resolved. It’s just taking a long time.”

However, he admitted that the delay was not positive: “It’s not helping, but at the end of the day as we’ve always said we’re here, we’re racing, we’ll be at all the races. What happens behind the scenes or what happens above our level will happen.”

The letter of intent has bought Lotus more time with its ongoing legal case, and Carter admits that some of the pressure is off: “The legal process was the legal process, we were always confident that it was going to be resolved and we were going to get through it. But it’s hard to say too much and talk too much when you’re in the middle of things.”

Carter insisted that Renault’s attempt to get a better deal with Bernie Ecclestone is not the cause of the hold up.

“To be perfectly honest I don’t think there’s a sticking point. I think it’s just a case of everyone working as hard as they can and as fast as they can to get the thing resolved as quickly as possible.”

Meanwhile when asked by Motorsport.com why the process was dragging on Ecclestone himself claimed he didn’t know.

“No idea,” said the F1 boss. “They say they’re going to buy it, I’m sure it’s not that they’re running out of money, I’m sure there are other reasons. Maybe the sellers aren’t really sellers.”