Home Page American Government Reference Desk Shopping Special Collections About Us Contribute



Escort, Inc.






GM Icons
By accessing/using The Crittenden Automotive Library/CarsAndRacingStuff.com, you signify your agreement with the Terms of Use on our Legal Information page. Our Privacy Policy is also available there.

Lotus 49


Open Wheel Racing

49
Vehicle Model

External Links
Wikipedia: Lotus 49
Page Sections
History
Documents
An open-wheel race car produced by Lotus.

Magazine covers include:  GTR Newsletter (June 2014 - British Racing Green model car)


History

The following section is an excerpt from Wikipedia's Automotive Industries page on 1 February 2021, text available via the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The Lotus 49 was a Formula One racing car designed by Colin Chapman and Maurice Philippe for the 1967 F1 season. It was designed around the Cosworth DFV engine that would power most of the Formula One grid through the 1970s. It was one of the first F1 cars to use a stressed-member drivetrain to reduce weight, and the first to be widely copied by other teams.

Jim Clark won on the car's debut, in 1967, and it would also provide him with the last win of his career, in 1968. Graham Hill went on to win that year's title and the car continued winning races until 1970.

After a difficult first year for Lotus in the three-litre formula, Chapman went back to the drawing board and came up with a design that was both back to basics, and forward-thinking. Taking inspiration from earlier designs, particularly the Lotus 43 and Lotus 38 Indycar, the 49 was the first F1 car to be powered by the Ford Cosworth DFV engine, after Chapman convinced Ford to build an F1 power-plant.

The 49 was an advanced design in Formula 1 because of its chassis configuration. The specially-designed engine became a stress-bearing structural member (seen earlier with the H16 engine in the Lotus 43 and BRM P83, and prior to that in the front-engined Lancia D50 of 1954), bolted to the monocoque at one end and the suspension and gearbox at the other. Since then, virtually all Formula 1 cars have been built this way.

The 49 was a testbed for several new pieces of racecar technology and presentation. Lotus was the first team to use aerofoil wings, which were introduced at the 1968 Monaco Grand Prix. Originally these wings were bolted directly to the suspension and were supported by slender struts. The wings were mounted several feet above the chassis of the car for effective use in clean air, however after several breakages which led to dangerous accidents, the high wings were banned and Lotus was forced to mount the wings directly to the bodywork.



Documents

DateDocument Name & DetailsDocuments
9 May 1969To: Colin Chapman, Lotus Engineering Ltd.
From: Jochen Rindt
Text - 1 page





The Crittenden Automotive Library