The COAT - Round One - Lotus 72 vs Williams FW08

[crmalcolm]

The fifteenth match in Round One, Lotus takes on Williams with the 72 vs the FW08

Lotus 72 (goodwood.com):
Seventy-five races and 20 wins does not sound that impressive in the present company. But the Lotus 72 has an ace up its sleeve. It won three Constructors’ Championships and two Drivers’ Championships in six seasons of racing and its 20 victories are spread out over five seasons, not just one. The Lotus 72 is a special racing car.

A complete innovation when it was launched, with inboard brakes, side-mounted radiators, and an overhead air intake the 72 was possibly Colin Chapman’s masterpiece. The wedge shape was a departure from the cigar-style Formula 1 cars that had preceded it, and was inspired by the pure-wedge form of the Lotus 56 IndyCar. At first it wasn’t quite right, with the anti-dive and anti-squat suspension (designed to stop the nose dipping under braking or the back squatting down under acceleration) causing issues for the drivers, but after some modification the car was unstoppable. The 72 made its debut in the middle of the 1970 season and, after retiring from his first race with it, Jochen Rindt proceeded to reel off four wins in a row. Sadly a crash at Monza robbed the world of Rindt, but he and the 72 had already been dominant enough that he won the title posthumously. In the penultimate race of the season, in a perfect memorial to Rindt, and foreshadowing what was to come, Emerson Fittipaldi took the car’s fifth victory. 1971 was a fallow year, as the car developed through the 72C to become the 72D, complete with iconic John Player Special livery. In 1972 Fittipaldi took five wins and the title, in ‘73 he took three, Ronnie Petersen another four and Lotus won the constructors' title. Petersen would take three more wins for the 72, now in 72E form in 1974, before the car struggled in ’75, while the 77 was developed for Lotus’s next F1 revolution.

No other car has had such longevity of success as the 72. It holds the record for the longest time between first and last victories for an F1 chassis, and to be competitive for five consecutive seasons (and race on for a sixth) seems mind-boggling in the world of pretty-much disposable racing cars we live in today. If you were amazed that the F2002, 500 and 158’s careers spanned across a couple of seasons, the 72 is in a completely different world.

Williams FW08 (wi77iams.com):
An evolution of the Williams FW07, the Frank Dernie designed FW08 debuted five races into the 1982 season at the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder.

Incredibly, during the course of the season, the Williams team won just one Grand Prix but that one win was enough to take Keke Rosberg to the World Drivers Title.

This was due, in part, to the fatal accident which befell Gilles Villeneuve at Zolder and the career ending accident that struck his teammate Didier Pironi seven races later, and the heinous reliability of the super-quick Renault team.

The FW08B, a variant of the FW08, featured a six-wheels (different to the Tyrrell P34 in that the additional pair of wheels was at the rear rather than the front), but despite the aerodynamic and grip advantage the extra wheels afforded, the project was shelved when the FIA outlawed six-wheelers for the 1983 season.

For the 1983 Formula 1 season, flat bottomed cars were mandatory, and so the FW08 was adapted to accommodate.

Turbo engines were becoming increasingly reliable which heralded the end for the comparatively underpowered Cosworth DFV engine so widely used amongst Formula 1 constructors for so many years, Williams being no exception.

Rosberg was able to score a solitary win at Monaco, which helped the team to fourth place in the World Constructors Championship.

The Williams FW08 is remarkable as being the first Formula 1 car to be driven by Ayrton Senna at a mid-season test at Donington Park, where he outpaced both Williams’ contracted drivers.