THE RISE AND FALL OF LOTUS AS AN F1 SUPERPOWER
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Stirling Moss had already scored four victories for Lotus founder Colin Chapman’s cars, run by Rob Walker’s privateer squad, when Team Lotus took its first world championship F1 success at the 1961 United States Grand Prix. Lotus would claim its first title double in 1963, and by the time Team Lotus closed its doors in 1994 the British constructor had racked up 79 victories, six drivers’ titles and seven constructors’ championships. Even now, only Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Williams can better those figures.
To mark the 60th anniversary of that first succes, we’ve delved into Lotus’s F1 form over the years. We’ve used supertimes, which are based on the fastest single lap by each car at each race weekend, expressed as a percentage of the fastest lap overall (100.000%) and averaged over the season. We’ve used all Lotus entries, not just the works cars, but have ignored the times when the Lotus name has been brought back, first by the Malaysian-backed team that later became Caterham and then the Enstone-based ‘Lotus’ between its different Renault eras.
Lotus arrived in F1 in 1958 with the front-engined type 12 and 16 models. As historic racing has shown, the lightweight 16 had the potential to be rapid, but that was not unlocked in period.
The cars weren’t reliable either. Lotus was 5.307% and 3.829% off the pace in 1958 and 1959
