Classic Team Lotus is always a welcome guest at historic motorsport events. Based in England, more precisely in Hethel, Norfolk, the English team looks after the heritage of the great and successful Lotus racing team.
Team Lotus International has created Classic Team Lotus to preserve all aspects of its history. The Classic Team is responsible for no less than 58 monoposto racing cars built between 1958 and 1990 by the former Team Lotus racing team.
These race cars are a testament to the innovative art of race car construction by founder Colin Chapman and everyone else who was involved in any way, be it as an engineer, mechanic or racing driver.
The aim of Classic Team Lotus is to preserve and promote the great history of the team and to bring it closer to young people who may not have been able to experience the active Lotus era.
Of course, a comprehensive service is also available for the restoration, maintenance and operation of a Lotus monoposto racing car in the team’s original workshops.
The Lotus Racing Team was characterised by one figure, the charismatic Colin Chapman, a racing car designer in a class of his own. At the time, Enzo Ferrari disparagingly referred to the English racing teams as “garagisti”, but when the English formula racing cars, which had long since been equipped with mid-engines, drove in circles around the cumbersome Ferraris, even the Comendatore had to realise that the “garagisti” more than understood their craft.
They were quick in their decisions, gave experiments the necessary space, corrected misjudgements as quickly as possible and were therefore very far ahead.
Colin Chapman was probably the most uncompromising racing car designer of the 1960s and 1970s. Chapman was never lacking in ideas and inventions, and his willingness to take risks was boundless, which his drivers often had to painfully experience. Chapman was a friend of lightweight construction, which of course often led to important parts breaking under the stress of a Formula 1 race. Jochen Rindt once said: “Either I will be world champion in his car or I will die in it. Unfortunately, both were true at the end of the 1970 season.
So many innovative and pioneering ideas can be traced back to Colin Chapman. The Lotus 49 was the first Formula 1 racing car with an aluminium composite monocoque, the Lotus 79 was the first truly functional ground-effect Formula 1 car with which Mario Andretti won the 1978 World Championship relatively easily, all other teams adopted both the monocoque construction and the design philosophy of the side skirts at the end of the 1970s.
Classic Team Lotus preserves this rich history of one of the most successful Formula 1 racing teams to this day and brings it to virtually all historic motorsport events in Europe.
For more information about the Classic Team Lotus: classicteamlotus.co.uk
