JOINT ATTACK
It took a mixture of talents to create the allconquering Team Lotus Cortina race cars, which dominated 1960s saloon car racing.
The story of the Cortina race car programme really began in mid-1962, well before the car was even announced. Walter Hayes knew that a high-performance GT model was due in 1963, and called up his old friend Colin Chapman of Lotus, to develop a new twin-cam engined Lotus Cortina.
As far as factory-backed cars are concerned, this story spans six years — 1963 to 1968 — but it all took time to mature. The early Lotus Cortinas proved to be depressingly fragile race cars, so the Cortina GT became a stand-in racer; the Lotus Cortina only being competitive from 1964. Although many teams waited impatiently for the new twin-cam
