A step too far

Team Lotus, under Colin Chapman had designed the Lotus 78 and the Lotus 79 that revolutionised Formula 1 by introducing the concept of ground effect. It was very successful, giving Mario Andretti and Team Lotus the 1978 World Titles. The other teams had only one choice, follow this lead.

The Lotus 80 (picture above) was then introduced by Team Lotus in 1979. The car, designed by Colin Chapman, Martin Ogilvie, Peter Wright and Tony Rudd was an attempt to take ground effect as far as possible.

Ogilvie and Rudd reasoned that to take a further step ahead of the competition, the new car should be designed as one huge ground effect system, starting at the front nose and extending all the way to the back of the car and beyond the rear wheels. In theory, this would create a tremendous amount of downforce, so the 80 chassis would not need any wings.

At the first tests, Mario Andretti and Carlos Reutemann reported that in braking and cornering, where speeds were low, the car lost downforce then regained it unexpectedly.

It was discovered that when the car generated maximum downforce, it was too much for the driver to cope with. The team experimented by fitting the car with wings, but this had little effect on the way the car behaved. Andretti persevered with the car, but new team mate Reutemann refused to drive it and continued with the Lotus 79.

Chapman eventually had to admit the 80 was not the step forward he expected, and the Lotus 79 was modified and pressed back into service. Only 4 of the 39 points were scored with the Lotus 80, the remainder were scored with the updated version of the Lotus 79 (picture below, here Reutemann).