In addition, they both went their separate ways when it came to setting up the cars-and neither proved terribly effective in this task. Changes in tyre construction from Goodyear had rendered the 72 almost useless and neither Peterson nor his team-mate Jacky Ickx seemed to be able to do anything with it. The previous year, they had won seven events (with Fittipaldi and Peterson on the driving strength) and Ronnie's trio of 1974 victories were down to his instant driving bravado rather than the car's fundamental capability. It is a measure of the standards which the team sets itself that they look back on 1974 as a highly disappointing year, never mind the fact that Ronnie Peterson won three Grand Prix for them. It was shelved midway through 1974 and Lotus soldiered on with the 72. Intended to be a much lighter version of the 72, not only proved to be uncompetitive, but too heavy and fragile. They had won the World Championship with the Lotus 72 three years earlier and they were still using that same car the Ralph Bellamy-designed Lotus 76. Going back to 1975, one has to appreciate how things were developing at Team Lotus. The 78 won two more of the year's 16 races, so Lotus' complete tally is eight Grand Prix race triumphs, This compares to Ferrari's five, Brabharn's two (both under questionable circumstances) and one for Tyrrell. Tameo Kits has produced the model of this fabulous single-seater (WCT 78 in the World Champion series) and Ricardo Moura has assembled it with great skill.On the way, he designed the Lotus 78. Progressively, starting from 1979, all the F1 cars adopted the ground effect, with side skirts and profiled bottom, until in 1983 the Federation intervened to change the regulations and limit the use of these aerodynamic devices that had caused a sudden and generalized increase in performance, making the cars very dangerous. The car did school, even if all the other Formula 1 teams took at least a year to discover the reason that benefited the Lotus 79. A new term was then used to define these cars: with a ground effect.Īt the debut the Lotus 79 proved immediately faster than all the competitors and only withdrawals due to mechanical failures prevented it from winning all the races on the calendar. Designed by Martin Ogilvie and Peter Wright, he carried the aerodynamics research accomplished in great secrecy by Lotus in those years and partly already expressed in the previous model, the Lotus 78. The Lotus 79 was a truly revolutionary car for its era. Nicknamed “Black Beauty” due to its proportioned shapes and the black livery of the sponsor “John Player Special”, it is considered by some to be the most technically significant single-seater in the history of F1. With its pilots Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson he won 6 Grand Prix that allowed the Italian-American to become World Champion and to the team to win the constructors title. The Lotus 79 is a Formula 1 car that competed in the 1978 World Championship.
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