sentences:  Because Lotus planned on continuing to compete in FIA GT Championship, they decided to build a new race car for the 1997 season, due to Esprit GT1 not being powerful enough to compete with other GT1 race cars like Porsche 911 GT1, Mercedes CLK GTR and McLaren F1.Lotus was aware of the fact that they lacked enough budget to produce multiple road versions of the GT1, so they came up with another plan.Through interpretation of the rules for FIA GT, Lotus realized they would only need to build a single production car in order to meet homologation requirements.