A truly special player: part 3 of our series on Team Lotus
Gifted, driven, obsessive – Colin Chapman’s ambition drove Lotus to soaring heights, but also into baffling technological cul-de-sacs as his business empire grew and his focus slipped
Colin Chapman was the (John Player) Special One of grand prix racing in the 1970s. Just not all of the time. For certain generations black and gold fag-packet Lotus racing cars distil the essence of Formula 1 – either in full-scale or Corgi toy form. But the decade in which Lotus clinched four world championships and its drivers three more for themselves was a frustratingly inconsistent one, coloured by golden heights to match the glory days of Jimmy Clark, and offset against the deepest blackspots of mediocrity, misfires and failure. That was all Chapman: often inspired, always alive to the next big thing, but at times distracted by the burning ambition of a rapidly growing empire. Under a tamer chief, Team Lotus would have churned out a string of solid, conservative F1 cars to level out those peaks and troughs and consolidate the company’s standing as the archetype of British F1 expertise. But conservative simply wasn’t the Colin Chapman way. So it wasn’t Lotus’s either.
On face value it’s a contradiction that a company always alert to innovation should be carried through a key chapter of its existence by just two F1 models. But these cars were the Types 49 and 72 – epochal, among the greatest created, by anyone in any era – and their longevity was a direct consequence of the experiments and blind alleys Chapman regularly explored that required Team Lotus time and again to fall back on its best work. Neither were supposed to race for so long.
The 49 was conceived as a relatively simple device upon which to develop the wonder that was the Ford-cosworth DFV V8. It ended up serving Team Lotus across three full seasons and the first bit of a fourth – winning grands prix in each. In the 49’s B-spec second season, 1968, Graham Hill was a suitably fully stressed Lotus member who bore the brunt of carrying Chapman and his stunned team through the devastating aftermath of Jimmy Clark’s death, killed in April in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim. Hill’s second world title, following his first earned with BRM in 1962, turned into a grind, but started with two spirit-lifting consecutive wins in May, at Jarama and Monaco. At the British GP, privateer Rob Walker rolled back the years to the Stirling Moss era when Jo Siffert steered his blue 49 to a famous Brands Hatch victory, in the wake of a fire that destroyed the team’s original chassis. Then as the summer progressed the two Jackie/jackys (Stewart and Ickx) loomed in Hill’s mirrors, and reigning champion Denny Hulme even drew alongside in his bright orange Mclaren. But Graham held his considerable nerve to win the
Mexico finale. This was a fine championship win, especially in such traumatic context.
It was a title that would surely have been Clark’s had he lived, claimed in a maturing 49B in its red and white Gold Leaf colours. Sacrilege! But while the engine-chassis-suspension combo was now more robust, the opposite was true of the spindly, plain frightening aerofoils on stalks that had sprouted over the fat rear Firestones. Harnessing downforce was the new rage and on this occasion Chapman was following the lead of both Ferrari and Brabham, which pre-dated Lotus on the use of inverted wings. But he cottoned on to the massive potential, attaching aerofoils to long struts bolted on the rear suspension to convert ‘download’ directly into traction. A shame they were also lethal. At Rouen for the French GP, young Jackie Oliver discovered just how much when the slipstream of another car unsettled his 49 and catapulted it into a brick gatepost at 140mph. His dazed expression as he stood unharmed next to the wreck was likely as much for the prospect of facing Chapman as it was for what he’d just survived. Colin could be scathing, unfairly so, about the future Arrows boss.
But inexperienced Oliver was far from the only one to struggle with the Old Man. In 1969, tough, ambitious Jochen Rindt left the comfort of trusted Brabham to put his faith in Chapman and Lotus – but this was an uneasy and volatile alliance. At the South African season opener, an additional highrise wing over the nose supposedly offered some sort of balance to the downforce being created at the rear – but this was getting ridiculous. Then at hair-raising Montjuïc Park both Hill and Rindt suffered near-identical wing collapses and huge accidents as the aerofoils ‘topped out’ over the fast hump after the pit straight. In a letter to Chapman dated 9 May, a seething Rindt wrote: “I have been racing F1 for five years and I have made one mistake… otherwise I managed to stay out of trouble. This situation changed rapidly since I joined your team… Honestly your cars are so quick that we would still be competitive with a few extra pounds used to make the weakest parts stronger… I can only drive a car in which
I have some confidence, and I feel the point of no confidence is quite near.” Jim Clark had never been this much trouble…
But Rindt had a point, and on spindly wings motorsport’s governing body called time – mid-practice at Monaco. It didn’t stop Hill, ‘Mr Monaco’ himself, scoring his then-record fifth win at the Principality, his 49B fitted with a fudged wedge-shaped rear end. Wings were here to stay, but in a profile that would quickly develop into something we recognise today.
The Chapman-rindt tension didn’t stop Jochen from bouncing back in spectacular style, engaging his friend Stewart in one of F1’s greatest duels at Silverstone’s British GP, and at season’s end Rindt finally became a grand prix winner at Watkins Glen, winning from pole. But the victory was overshadowed by the accident that would end Hill’s Team Lotus career (even if he would
JOCHEN RINDT LEFT THE COMFORT OF TRUSTED BRABHAM TO PUT HIS FAITH IN CHAPMAN AND LOTUS – BUT THIS WAS AN UNEASY AND VOLATILE ALLIANCE
obstinately race on elsewhere for another six years), Graham thrown from his cartwheeling 49B and badly smashing up both legs. The season had been another fraught one, Rindt’s frustrations rising further at Chapman’s latest obsession to harness the grip advantages of fourwheel drive – on the bulky, heavy Lotus 63 (so much for “simplify, then add lightness”). Both Hill and Rindt point-blank refused to race the car at the British GP, forcing an embarrassed Chapman to recall a 49 he’d sold to Jo Bonnier, who was lent a 63 as recompense. Mario Andretti, the Italian-american Indycar and dirt oval hero, was called upon to race the 4WD at the Nürburgring following his stunning pole position at Watkins Glen on his F1 debut in a 49B the year before. But Andretti’s car grounded out on full tanks early on and crashed, while clever John Miles fared little better in his appearances.
Following a heart-to-heart with Chapman in Germany, Rindt raced the 63 at the nonchampionship Oulton Park Gold Cup, finishing second to Stewart – the car’s best result. But the vogue was fading as aerodynamics held greater rewards than all-wheel traction. Instead, Chapman and designer Maurice Phillippe turned to finally creating a successor worthy of the aging 49 – and its promise was just enough to keep Rindt. If you want to become world champion, reasoned his manager Bernie Ecclestone, stay put; but if you want better odds of surviving…
Like the 25 and 49 before it, the Lotus 72 reset the bar after Rindt got his hands on it at the 1970 Spanish GP. Lessons from the Indy 500 campaigns shaped its wedge profile, its sidemounted radiators setting the template for F1 cars forever after. Like the 49, it was far from perfect from the start: its initial rising-rate torsion bar suspension, featuring anti-dive on the front and anti-squat at the rear, made it a handful, while inboard brakes on each corner required a rethink because of overheating. Such were the early headaches, the 49 was called back into action at Monaco, where Rindt scored its 12th and final win when his old boss Jack Brabham slithered off at the final turn. When the 72 was recalled for Zandvoort, Jochen embarked on a four-race winning streak. He was lucky at Brands Hatch, where Brabham lost out at the last gasp again, this time out of fuel. But at Hockenheim Rindt and Ickx engaged in a thrilling duel, Lotus beating Ferrari by just 0.7s. By Monza, the Austrian had one hand on the title. Once it was done, would he race on? He’d been shaken by the gruesome death of his friend Piers Courage at Zandvoort. Perhaps he would retire and go into business with Ecclestone. It all seemed to be ahead of him.
In Saturday morning practice at Monza, Lotus
A LITTLE MORE THAN TWO YEARS AFTER CLARK, TEAM LOTUS WAS THROWN BACK INTO TURMOIL
ran the 72 in experimental form without wings for minimum drag. Rindt crashed at Parabolica, struck a guardrail mounting post at close to 170mph, and submarined down the car because he hadn’t done up his uncomfortable crotch safety straps. A front brake-shaft failure was the given cause, although years later an Italian court ruled the safety barriers were installed improperly. A little more than two years after Clark, Team Lotus was thrown back into turmoil – and yet once again, the obsessional racing instinct to keep going kicked in. Young Emerson Fittipaldi, who’d made his F1 debut in a 49C at the British GP, won at Watkins Glen – just his fourth start – and thereby ensured Rindt became a unique posthumous world champion.
What’s strange is that Lotus still contrived to follow this up with its first winless season since 1959. Fittipaldi was knocked back by a road accident mid-1971 and once again Chapman found distraction in a tempting cul-de-sac: this time the turbine-powered Lotus 56B.
The potential of a turbine racer on a road course had been percolating in Chapman’s grey matter since Graham Hill had been fast in one at a Mosport USAC round back in 1968. The problem was slowing for tight corners and throttle lag on the way out. Still, Chapman commissioned Pratt & Whitney to produce a 3-litre equivalent for F1. For a US company with no interest in European racing, it was never a priority, but the engine was ready by the end of 1970 and tested in an unused 56. The first turbine F1 car made its debut in Fittipaldi’s hands at the Race of Champions the
following spring, while Reine Wisell and Dave Walker gave 56B further outings at Silverstone and Zandvoort. The turbine’s whistle and whine was a novelty among the shrieks of DFVS and V12s, but after Monza the experiment ran out of gas… A year after becoming world champions, Team Lotus slumped to fifth.
But 1972 would be a year of rejuvenation, for Lotus in JPS black and gold for the first time, for Fittipaldi and for the D-spec 72. Twin victories for the Brazilian at the Race of Champions and International Trophy foreshadowed the world title campaign, ‘Emmo’ winning in Spain, Belgium, Britain, Austria and Italy to become the youngest champion yet, at 25. Look what Lotus could do when Chapman kept his focus.
Another drivers’ world title should have followed in 1973, only for Stewart – recovered from the illness that had undermined his 1972 campaign – to spring back to his best for Tyrrell. Fittipaldi also had a new team-mate to worry about. Lotus had never been great at running two top-liners at the same time. Ronnie Peterson was well loved by all, Fittipaldi included, but his nine poles and four wins unsettled the champ – especially at Monza where victory for ‘Super Swede’ ended Emmo’s title hopes. Furious with Chapman, Emmo accepted a big-money switch to Mclaren. Good move: he’d win his second title in 1974 as Lotus began an odd mid-’70s slump.
Jacky Ickx started 1974 well with a win at the Race of Champions, complete with daring pass on Ferrari’s Niki Lauda. But the season was undermined by the type 76 (or the John Player Special Mark 1, as Chapman insisted on calling it), an overly ambitious misfire bristling with innovations that didn’t work. Beyond the extreme wedge shape, heavily contoured rear bodywork and bi-plane wing, the 76 initially featured four foot pedals – and a gear-knob button to operate an electronic clutch. The clutch pedal on the far left was used for leaving the start line, then could be withdrawn through a hydraulic system. Twin brake pedals gave an excited Peterson the option to left-foot brake – but the system was quietly dropped. As Chapman put it: “The trouble was its systems didn’t work – fuel, oil, cooling, brakes – and the steering wasn’t very good. Nothing very serious!” Peterson still won three races, in Monaco, France and Italy – but in ‘old faithful’ 72E. His patience was wearing thin, while a bemused Ickx appeared to check out early. The bright spark that lit up Ferrari was barely recognisable – except when racing sportscars.
Lotus hit rock-bottom in 1975 as the 72E was rolled out for the model’s sixth season. By this time ‘Trigger’s broom’ syndrome had really kicked in: there was little on the car Rindt would have recognised. Standardised Goodyear radials better suited to Ferraris, Mclarens, Tyrrells and Brabhams influenced a shift to a more conventionally sprung 72 while the wheelbase was stretched. Team Lotus was creaking. In the 1960s the group had been a small specialised company making attractive road cars, largely from proprietary parts sourced from bigger manufacturers. Now this was a true empire with diversifying strands, including a car company that made many more components than even larger brands committed to. There were two boatbuilding concerns and a plastics company as well.
BY THIS TIME ‘TRIGGER’S BROOM’ SYNDROME HAD REALLY KICKED IN: THERE WAS LITTLE ON THE CAR RINDT WOULD HAVE RECOGNISED
No wonder Chapman’s attention was diverted, especially after 15 years of sustained F1 success.
But the competitive spirit that drove this remarkable man – not to mention his pride – galvanised an ambition to claw back the ground lost to Ferrari and Mclaren in 1976. Andretti, long-admired since Watkins Glen in 1968 and burned by his own disappointments at Vel’s Parnelli Jones, committed full-time to Lotus to crack F1 once and for all. Meanwhile, the type 77 (or JPS MKII as Chapman still insisted) was a step in the right direction. Yes, the oversized cast-magnesium front brake calipers that doubled as structural suspension supports were another diversion, and Peterson stalked off to March in frustration. But with a motivated Andretti and Tony Southgate joining from Shadow to aid reliability and consistency, Lotus’s form began to turn. At the Fuji finale, as Lauda and James Hunt’s title climax played out, Andretti saved his tyres and won by a lap. Lotus and its John Player Special lived up to its name, just as it used to.
Meanwhile back in Norfolk, something new was cooking, bubbling nicely under the expert gaze of Chapman, aerodynamicist Peter Wright, designers Martin Ogilvie and Ralph Bellamy, plus EX-BRM man Tony Rudd. In the best Lotus traditions, it was gripping stuff… a recipe that would change the F1 world forever.