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Lotus 49
The Lotus 49 was a Formula One racing car designed by Colin Chapman and Maurice Philippe for the 1967 F1 season. It was one of the first F1 cars to use a stressed member engine combined with a monocoque to reduce weight, after BRM, with other teams adopting the concept after its success. An iteration of it, the 49B, adopted, after Ferrari, the use of strutted aerofoils to generate downforce.
Jim Clark won on the car's debut, in 1967, and it would also provide him with the last win of his career, in 1968. Graham Hill went on to win that year's title and the car continued winning races until 1970.
After a difficult first year for Lotus in the three-litre formula using the heavy and unreliable BRM H16 engine, Chapman and Philippe went back to the drawing board and came up with a design that was both back to basics and forward-thinking. Taking inspiration from earlier designs, particularly the BRM P83, Lotus 43, and Lotus 38 Indycar, the 49 was the first F1 car to be powered by the Ford Cosworth DFV engine, after Chapman convinced Ford to finance Cosworth designer Keith Duckworth's DFV design and build a F1 power-plant.
The 49 was an advanced design in Formula 1 because of its chassis configuration. The specially designed engine became a stress-bearing structural member (seen earlier with the H16 engine in the Lotus 43 and BRM P83, and prior to that in the front-engined Lancia D50 of 1954), bolted to the monocoque at one end and the suspension and gearbox at the other. Since then, virtually all Formula 1 cars have been built this way.
The model continued to be a testbed for several new pieces of racecar technology and presentation with the introduction of the 49B for the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix. Following Ferrari's introduction of strutted wings in F1, this chassis was the first Formula One car to use aerofoil wings mounted directly to wheel hubs, following their success on Jim Hall's Chaparral 2E. Originally these wings were bolted directly to the suspension and were supported by slender struts. The wings were mounted several feet above the chassis of the car for effective use in clean air, however after several breakages which led to dangerous accidents, the high wings were banned and Lotus was forced to mount the wings directly to the bodywork.
In testing, Graham Hill found the Lotus 49 easy to drive and responsive, but the power of the Ford engine difficult to handle at first. The V8 would give sudden bursts of power that Hill had reservations about. After his first run in the car, he said in typical witty fashion, 'It's got some poke! Not a bad old tool.' Jim Clark won with ease driving the 49 in its debut race at Zandvoort, and took another three wins during the season, although early unreliability with the DFV ended his championship hopes. The 49 had problems in its first race for Hill, and it had spark plug trouble at the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix, held on the 8.76 mile (14.73 kilometer) Spa-Francorchamps.
Clark and Hill fell victim to its reliability issues at the French Grand Prix, held at the Le Mans Bugatti Circuit (a smaller circuit using only part of the track used for the Le Mans 24 Hours), and lost to Jack Brabham. Clark then ran out of fuel at Monza during the Italian Grand Prix. Mechanical failures cost Lotus the championship that year, but it was felt that 1968 would be a better year after Cosworth and Lotus perfected their designs, which were clearly the way forward.
Clark won the first race of the 1968 season, the South African Grand Prix and the Tasman Series in Australia, but was killed in an F2 race at Hockenheim. Hill took over as team leader and won his second World Championship title, after clinching three Grand Prix wins – including the fourth of his five Monaco Grands Prix. Jo Siffert also drove a 49B, owned by Rob Walker, to win the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch that year, the last time a car entered by a genuine privateer won a championship Formula 1 race. The 49B also took Jochen Rindt to his first victory, in 1969, at Watkins Glen, New York, before he drove the type to its last win, in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix.
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Lotus 49
The Lotus 49 was a Formula One racing car designed by Colin Chapman and Maurice Philippe for the 1967 F1 season. It was one of the first F1 cars to use a stressed member engine combined with a monocoque to reduce weight, after BRM, with other teams adopting the concept after its success. An iteration of it, the 49B, adopted, after Ferrari, the use of strutted aerofoils to generate downforce.
Jim Clark won on the car's debut, in 1967, and it would also provide him with the last win of his career, in 1968. Graham Hill went on to win that year's title and the car continued winning races until 1970.
After a difficult first year for Lotus in the three-litre formula using the heavy and unreliable BRM H16 engine, Chapman and Philippe went back to the drawing board and came up with a design that was both back to basics and forward-thinking. Taking inspiration from earlier designs, particularly the BRM P83, Lotus 43, and Lotus 38 Indycar, the 49 was the first F1 car to be powered by the Ford Cosworth DFV engine, after Chapman convinced Ford to finance Cosworth designer Keith Duckworth's DFV design and build a F1 power-plant.
The 49 was an advanced design in Formula 1 because of its chassis configuration. The specially designed engine became a stress-bearing structural member (seen earlier with the H16 engine in the Lotus 43 and BRM P83, and prior to that in the front-engined Lancia D50 of 1954), bolted to the monocoque at one end and the suspension and gearbox at the other. Since then, virtually all Formula 1 cars have been built this way.
The model continued to be a testbed for several new pieces of racecar technology and presentation with the introduction of the 49B for the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix. Following Ferrari's introduction of strutted wings in F1, this chassis was the first Formula One car to use aerofoil wings mounted directly to wheel hubs, following their success on Jim Hall's Chaparral 2E. Originally these wings were bolted directly to the suspension and were supported by slender struts. The wings were mounted several feet above the chassis of the car for effective use in clean air, however after several breakages which led to dangerous accidents, the high wings were banned and Lotus was forced to mount the wings directly to the bodywork.
In testing, Graham Hill found the Lotus 49 easy to drive and responsive, but the power of the Ford engine difficult to handle at first. The V8 would give sudden bursts of power that Hill had reservations about. After his first run in the car, he said in typical witty fashion, 'It's got some poke! Not a bad old tool.' Jim Clark won with ease driving the 49 in its debut race at Zandvoort, and took another three wins during the season, although early unreliability with the DFV ended his championship hopes. The 49 had problems in its first race for Hill, and it had spark plug trouble at the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix, held on the 8.76 mile (14.73 kilometer) Spa-Francorchamps.
Clark and Hill fell victim to its reliability issues at the French Grand Prix, held at the Le Mans Bugatti Circuit (a smaller circuit using only part of the track used for the Le Mans 24 Hours), and lost to Jack Brabham. Clark then ran out of fuel at Monza during the Italian Grand Prix. Mechanical failures cost Lotus the championship that year, but it was felt that 1968 would be a better year after Cosworth and Lotus perfected their designs, which were clearly the way forward.
Clark won the first race of the 1968 season, the South African Grand Prix and the Tasman Series in Australia, but was killed in an F2 race at Hockenheim. Hill took over as team leader and won his second World Championship title, after clinching three Grand Prix wins – including the fourth of his five Monaco Grands Prix. Jo Siffert also drove a 49B, owned by Rob Walker, to win the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch that year, the last time a car entered by a genuine privateer won a championship Formula 1 race. The 49B also took Jochen Rindt to his first victory, in 1969, at Watkins Glen, New York, before he drove the type to its last win, in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix.