THE LOFTY BRAVERY LEVELS OF ’70S RACING drivers are not generally disputed. But some things add extra context. I’m trying the Lotus Type 56B’s lay-down cockpit for size: next to my left elbow, hidden within the monocoque, is a propshaft that would be spinning at goodness-knows-how-many rpm; just behind my shoulders, a gas turbine engine limited to a casual 37,000rpm; and, back in the 56B’s short racing life, there would have been 350 litres of kerosene and petrol swimming around in side tanks to fuel it. I had to point my toes like a gymnast to post my feet under the front axle to the pedals. It’s tight in here, precisely packaged to the point of claustrophobia.
We’re stationary inside Classic Team Lotus HQ and the turbine is silent, sleeping, but a shiver still runs down my spine. Man, did they have some bottle. And weren’t they part of something remarkable too – what a unique, boundary-pushing creation to drive, and what a boundary-pushing, creative era to have been at the heart of.
Few teams pushed the creative boundaries like Team Lotus, of course. The 56B is the only gas turbine car to have competed in Formula 1, and the only one that ever will unless there’s a particularly radical rule change. In 2021 it ran again for the first time after an intensive restoration by Classic Team Lotus – pressing play on a moment frozen in time since it crossed the line in its last race, at Hockenheim in 1971, with Emerson Fittipaldi at the wheel.
Here on the upper floor of Classic Team Lotus’s purpose-built HQ, a stone’s throw from the Lotus Cars site at Hethel, we’re surrounded by
