Thank Frankel it's Friday: Was the 76 Lotus' worst F1 car?

And the actual car: one look at its bi-plane rear wing revealed that it could only be a Lotus 76. I knew this because, a few years back, I drove one. Only two were ever built, for drivers Peterson and Jacky Ickx, so there’s a 50 per cent chance that this was the car I drove.

If anyone remembers the Lotus 76, it is as the least successful Lotus F1 car of the 1970s. With the 49 and 72 behind it and 78 and 79 ahead it was caught between two of Hethel’s greatest eras, the only F1 car produced in that era not to win a single Grand Prix. Hell, it didn’t even get on the podium. But was it actually the complete disaster its record suggests? 

In a word, yes. But that’s not to say the car has not been thoroughly misunderstood or that, had the cards fallen slightly differently, it could have been another success story for Lotus. 

The first thing people don’t appreciate is that it wasn’t a new car and was never intended so to be. By the time it made its debut in 1974, the Lotus 72 it was meant to replace was already four seasons old, but the brief was to tidy up the 72’s design, make it lighter and easier to work on. Which is why features like its inboard brakes and torsion bar suspension were carried over.

The car was designed by Ralph Bellamy under instruction from Colin Chapman, a man who could never resist the urge to innovate. So he told Bellamy to incorporate an electronically controlled clutch operated via a button on the gear lever, thus allowing the driver to left-foot brake. As with so many of Chapman’s ideas, it was years ahead of its time. Too far ahead as it turns out. The drivers didn’t like it, the hydraulics it required more than negated any weight saving Bellamy had achieved and, crucially, perfecting the system ate into vital testing hours that could have been spent developing the car itself. So that was one problem. 

Another was that bi-plane rear wing. Bellamy had developed the 72 by pushing its rear wing further and further rearward and balancing the additional downforce by adding more front wing, but new regulations meant wings had to be bolted close to the car, so Bellamy thought two wings might make up the difference. As he was honest enough to tell me, ‘it didn’t work’. And soon the 76 was back racing with a single rear wing.

But according to Bellamy the biggest problem (and probably the least known) is that while Lotus was trying to sort the clutch, Goodyear was working with McLaren to determine the tyre specifications that all teams would use in 1974, and the result was a tyre with a much stiffer construction that needed more heat before it could work. ‘And with those inboard front brakes and strong rearward weight bias, we just couldn’t get any heat into the front tyres, so it understeered like a bastard.’

And finally, the 76 was not reliable. Two cars were entered for Grands Prix in South Africa, Spain and Belgium and accrued not a single finish between them. Interestingly, however, it was raining in Spain and with wets instead of slicks Peterson led for twenty laps until it started to dry out and his taped up radiators caused the car to overheat. The only result it ever scored was at the Nurburgring where Peterson came fourth. It wasn’t even meant to be racing as Chapman had by then exhumed the old 72, but Ronnie crashed his in practice so the 76 was brought off the bench. But even that result was not quite what it seemed as the car raced with the entire back end from the bent 72. A Lotus 74 no less… 

The car I drove was the one in which Peterson had led at Jarama. The button on the gear lever was still there, albeit in an entirely decorative role, as was its V-shaped brake pedal, allowing the driver to choose which foot to use. From memory, the bi-plane rear wing was not.  I drove it at Hethel, the track where much of its development would have taken place and as the car was by then fully sorted and I was not Ronnie Peterson, none of its historical problems were apparent to me. It did understeer a bit on Avon slicks, but I quite like that in a car with a power to weight ratio not far short of 1,000bhp per tonne. I remember much more the sense of privilege from lowering myself into a proper JPS Lotus and relief in discovering that, for all its monstrous pace, it was actually a faithful and forgiving car to drive. I did quite a few laps, kept the DFV below 10,000rpm, enjoyed the light-switch flick of the Hewland gearchange and the car’s ability to reduce long straights to short acceleration and braking zones.

And then I gave it back. The Lotus 76 is an almost forgotten F1 car today, but I will remember it not only for the fun I had but also for how easily its story could have been so different. It was never going to be a 72 or a 79, but had it not been undone by its tyres, the clutch, the wing and reliability issues, it could at least have run at the front. As it did just once, with Ronnie Peterson in the rain. As sights to see, I expect there would have been few better. 

Photography courtesy of LAT Images