Brits Who Made The Modern World: The Lotus 25
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2013
- Peter Snow finds out how Britain's successful Formula One industry has its origins in a remarkable amateur racing club and a visionary group of motor enthusiasts. He meets the surviving members of the Lotus Engineering team whose revolutionary car, the Lotus 25, changed the sport forever.
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Vanwall won the Formula One World Constructors' Championship in 1958, Cooper in 1959 and 1960, BRM in 1962, Lotus only in 1963. When Lotus started at F1 (1958) the brits were already at the top.
Couldn't say more.
Plucky Brits...
BRM H engine makes the best SOUNDS
JIM CLARK - By far the greatest driver ever - no doubt. He is and was the Best of the Best. No other driver in history until today was so superior as Clark.
This man is the Olymp of driving - the Michelangelo of racing - a dynamic art at the highest level. So smooth, so precise, so fast....simply out of this world. One, who won in Spa by 5 minutes (!) in monsoon rain...One, who takes back a complete lap (!) in Monza and back into the lead... One, who took pole on the original 22,8 km Nürburgring track by 9 (!) seconds and more....One who won Indy by 2 whole (!) laps...For eternity and by lightyears unmatched in the sport. That`s just four examples of his mesmeric unique genius...
When I was a young man Jim Clark was my absolute favorite driver.. Actually, I read every bit of news that I could get about him. His death felt like a personal loss... and was there ever a man who met the right car than Jim fitting the Lotus 25? This video captures so well the development of the car from the wonderful gang of guys building race cars at home who were gathered by Chapman and the match with the young sheep farmer who could feel a car like nobody else. This is just a jewel..
I remember not getting enough of British racing back when I was in high school, Jim Clark, Ken Miles, & Graham Hill. They were my hero’s. When I went off to college in the mid to late 60’s I remember walking to downtown Akron to a magazine store. There I bought my first copy of Auto Week, it was a 25 cent newspaper. I was in heaven. The ad’s in the back were things of dreams! To see a ZF gearbox for sale! If there was such a thing as the internet then I would have been in deeper trouble than I already was.
What this film completely ignores and at times deliberately disguises is that in 1958 when Lotus entered F1 the sport was Already dominated by British teams like Vanwall, BRM and Cooper (of "Mini Cooper" fame). Mercedes (this video goes on about them a lot) dropped out of all motorsport in 1955 because of the Le Mans disaster so never raced against Lotus. Ferrari were around then but were not by any means the all-conquering Fiat-backed outfit that exists today, but started in the 1950s as a privateer team like Lotus, although admittedly one that was better funded at the time.
The Lotus 25 was a feat of engineering and one of the most gorgeous, simple car designs of all time, but this documentary is mostly nonsense unfortunately!
Without taking anything away from him, Chapman did not invent the monocoque, it was derived from the aviation industry. He adapted it. Very clever but not quite the same thing. The crossover in aviation in Britain occurred between the Hurricane, which was a spaceframe and the Spitfire, which was a monocoque. Since Chapman had been an aluminium engineer, he would have been well aware of it.
Secondly, there is no mention of that other famous British "Garagista", John Cooper, who first moved the engine to the back of the car. With this configuration and the late Jack Brabham at the wheel, he had won both the 1959 and 1960 World Championships. Again, Chapman cleverly adapted the idea and also reduced the frontal area of the car by lying the driver down very low in the chassis.
Thirdly, the failures which had cost Lotus the World Championship in 1962 were as much to do with the Coventry Climax V8 as anything else. The Climax is yet another example of adaptation, owing its origins to a humble fire pump engine. To win in F1, it had to be coaxed rather than choked but ultimately it succeeded because it had a good combination of light weight, low fuel consumption and good power and reliability.
***** What did I lie about?
***** Ahh...okay.
MICROSOFT APPLE LOTUS they used what others had come up with and packaged it//there are lots of ideas but there is a lack of money and opportunity
Think you'll find that the Citroen Traction Avant had a monocoque chassis in 1934
Many people say so. That monocoque did not envelop the drive train, but monocoque or semi -monocoque none the less. The VW Beetle had elements of monocoque construction. So the method was around. Chapman's achievement, hands down, was in bringing this to Formula 1.
Once upon a time, during the Spring of 1995, I was having lunch with Group Captain David Green, Founder of the Spitfire Society and a Royal Air Force Spitfire veteran. We were at a Hamble Marina restaurant and the Group Captain lamented that Brits of the ilk that designed, built and flew the aircraft of the "Battle of Britain" were no longer present in British society. I protested by saying that if one looked at the Cooper F1 and Lotus 25, one could see the essences of the Hurricane and the Spitfire. Furthermore, the design genius of R.J. Mitchel could be seen in the designs of Colin Chapman.
I went on that the "Boys of the Summer of 1940" had been reincarnated as the British Grand Prix Teams of the 1960's. The engineers, the "boffins" the "erks" and the "fighter" pilots were all there practicing their skills in a peaceful way, yet the spirit that had won the "Battle of Britain" had been safely stored away in British Grand Prix Teams, just in case Britain should ever need such ingenuity, mixed with tenacity, skill and courage again. The good Group Captain smiled and lifted his glass to me and said: "Cheers".
Simple and elegant was the essence of Chapman's greatest designs. I fit looked right it was right is another saying. In partiuclar the 25/33 and the derivatives for F2/3 and Tasman. Have a look at the Tasman Lotus 32B raced by Clark in the 1965 Tasman have a look at the you tube film of Clark at Warwick Farm and Sandown. For the following Tasman series the 32B was sold to the pretty good kiwi privateer Jim Palmer at Pukekohe , Palmer was only 1.2 second a 2.2 mile lap than Clark and Stewart. At Longford , Palmer was closing on Brabham. The Lotus 72 and 78 are other brilliant simple and elegant designs. So 25, 33, 72 and 78. But in some ways the first ground effect car the Lotus 77 is a different sort of masterpiecce, if not so elegant in many ways it destroyed classic F1 making it a much more complex expensive sport and a sport no longer centred on passing and dueling. But there is something else about the Lotus 1977. Have a lot of photos of Andretti at Hockenheim in 1977. The lotus 77 looks like a classic cold war air fighter to me - a sort of inverted Hawker Hunter designed by Sydney Cam- who designed the Hurricane, TYphoon. Fury, Sea Hawk, Hunter, Harrier and the P1154 - yes in 1964 Cam had designed the equivalent of the Mach 2 STOL/VTOL J35 JSF it was scrapped on the production. In a few months Cam and Barry Laird designed the equivalent of the JSF in say 6 months.
As I do! That was beautiful, sir.
Cheers!
Videos like this most certainly bring out the Anglophile in me. ♥Long live Great Britain!♥
It is a pity that so much work went into this show and there are so many inaccuracies, omissions, misstatements. There is some wonderful footage - while he speaks of foreign dominance - and those are British cars in the video (Coopers a lot). No mention is made of John Cooper, who led the revolution. A Lotus 18 won the Grand Prix of Monaco in 1961 (and the German GP). The Lotus 24 was a race winner in Clark's hands in 1962. So the miracle of the 25 was the leap beyond where everyone else (including Lotus) was. And Ferrari was nowhere in 1962... and no shark nose that year either! I could go on and on... great film; good to see it celebrated; too bad about the gross inaccuracies.
COOPER was a real pioneer
Keith Crossley I concur, good sir. A much better history of Lotus can be found in Victory by Design’s episode on the marque hosted by Alain de Cadenet. Great series.
Keith Crossley
Ferrari did in fact run the sharknoses in ‘62 for Phil Hill, Willi Mairesse and Ricardo Rodriguez for most of the year, but by that point they were hopelessly outclassed by Lotus and BRM. The new 156 came from Forghieri after Carlo Chitti left in the factory revolt at the end of 1962
For a start what about the Coventry Climax power unit that won for both Lotus and Cooper
The film was very much 'Lotus-lite' and misleading, I agree. I was amazed it didn't connect the 25's monocoque construction with Chapman's Lotus Elite, launched in 1957 with a fibreglass monocoque. Moreover, just as the 25 was - for me - the most beautiful GP car ever, so the Elite can lay claim to being one of, if not the, prettiest sports car of all time.
In spite of the fact that I am Belgiam living today in Brussels, I was living in East London South Africa at the time. I was there for the GP of 1962 and 1963. Nice to know that now that I am 58, theses two races were the biginning of the big story of F . I need to add this video to my blog. Many thanks.
I’m glad to read the other comments about Vanwall and Cooper especially in the 2.5 litre formula. The omission of these two names, especially as the early front engined Lotus wasn’t competitive, is absurd. Yes, by 1960 Lotus was getting there, but Brabham still won the world championship in a Cooper.
180mph in that little canoe? Fuck that. These guys were savage.
For a clean-sheet brand new car, incorporating new technology (for cars, at least) and having never actually been tested until it arrived at the first race of the season, to start on the front row and lead most of the race is an extremely remarkable achievement. That it broke down late in the race merely brought the team back to reality, but the car's potential was obvious for all to see.
Same with the 49 in 1967 and 78 in 1977. New fragile chassis and new fragile brilliant engine. In 1977 Andretti was using the development Cosworth in those years Andretti, Hunt and Schecketer were the usually priviledged but in 1977 the 78 ground effect design was a bit slow on some medium speed circuits so maybe Andretti was trying harder than Hunt in 1976 were the old M23 McLaren was probably much the best Ford chassis.
My brother had a Jensen Healey with a lotus engine. I loved that car.
My dad was Chief Engineer on the Healey. We both worked at Lotus.
That original garage is so funky cool.
Lotus was not competing against the likes of Mercedes in the early '60s as Mercedes had withdrawn from F-1 after the fiery disaster at Le Man in 1955.
I hope the prankster's are having fun. I DID NOT WRITE THE ABOVE COMMENT!!!
Interesting but if Von Trips had not died at Monza in 1961 I suspect Von Trips and possibly Moss would have been in the Porsche in 1962. What was Dan Gurneys weight in 1962 he was 6ft 2. Von Trips was 5/11 but weighted no more than 9 stone partly because he was a diabetic. That possibly would have given him 1.5/2 secs a lap and Moss if he had not had that accident at Goodwood I supect might have been Von Trips teamate at Porsche. Ferrari was never going to be competitve in 1962 ( however look several times at the films of the 1962 Belgian GP Clarks and the Lotus 25 first victory and a critical one in establishing his ascendancy against potentially two of his greatest rivals team mate Trevor Taylor and Willie Marisse. THe 62 Belgain is a very fast race- the front group of 5/8 cars are running on the limit the 5th and 6th finishers Surtees and Brabham are already 16 miles behind after about 200 miles which reflects the fact only Ireland , Clark, Taylor and McLaren had the best fully developed version of the Cliamx V8 a the time- but also that the race is on the limit. As Stewart said there are fast races and slow races and Clarks first victory is his hardest and fastest and there are truly awesome issues about that race- Mariesse drive is actually brilliant rather than reckless and one look at his eyes and face shows he is driving at 100% concentration like Nulvorai and Fangio on their greatest drives at the Nurburgring. Look at 62 spa there is something awesome there
@@frederickmiles327 Who is the greatest driver of all time?
Just another reason to be Lotus for life.
Marvelous !
“One of the problems I had at the beginning with Lotus 25 was the very reclined driving position that it didn't leave me much to see, especially in the corners. It was like going on a bed on wheels"
Jim Clark
Greetings from Venezuela
“Uno de los problemas que tenía al principio con el Lotus 25 era la posición tan reclinada de pilotaje, que no me dejaba mucho que ver, especialmente en las curvas. Era como ir en una cama con ruedas”
Jim Clark
Saludos desde Venezuela
The F1 Constructors Championship trophy should be named after Colin Chapman.
Some may argue that it should be named after Enzo Ferrari. The drivers trophy should be named after Ayrton Senna, the best driver ever.
I think Jim Clark’s family might have something to say about that...along with Stirling Moss.
@@samsonian And Fangio, who claimed Clark to be the best ever, who are we to argue with the great man?
Quite right; what about Cooper - and Vanwall for that matter? Later on there was Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren, both operating out of Britain via John Coopers operation
I love these cars. They must be so much fun to drive and they're beautiful to look at.
i spotted alot of coopers there.however having worked on bot lotus and cooper f1 cars i can sy that lotus had a completely different method of making cars.
Winning 3 races of a series, with a new design was probably considered to be a huge success. Also, scary as hell for Ferrari.
I love driving the Lotus Type 25 on Project Cars😄
Dark Prince have you tried it in VR?
Wasn't the Coopers the cars that changed Formula one forever, seeing they were the first rear engined car to win the constructors title and drivers championship in 59 and 60. But then, I guess that it took an Aussie to help develop the Coopers and then show the World how to drive them to Victory is somewhat inconvenient. Sorry, you were saying?
" the stars are there ti indicate where the finish line is" Chinese proverb. And Collin Chapman surely knew about it.
Just a minor little nitpick- @15:45, in those days Formula One cars did not start the race when 'the lights went out' but with the waving of a flag, usually the national flag of the country the race was being held in.
There's something about the ingenuity of the Brits take their motorcycles for instance
BSA Brough Superior Triumph Norton AJS VINCENT BLACK SHADOW
The Brits dominated motorcycle market and they're the most sought after and collectible motorcycles in the world today
This is the most British thing ever
Lotus : the brain of the car
How do you like that Eno Ferrari!! Brits like the Lotus team revolutionising F1 and other motor sports too!!
Do you know the name was ENZO Ferrari?
WTF is ENO Ferrari?
The 1954 D-Type Jaguar had the first automotive monocoque.
Derived from aviation technology, such as the P-51 Mustang and others of the WWII era...
Canoes were first of ALL!
375GTB D-Jag had a stressed center section but a tubular front subframe for mounting of the engine, transmission and front suspension.
The first successful race car with a full metal monocoque was the US-made Cornelian, which competed in the AAA championship series, including the Indianapolis 500... in 1917!! The Cornelian was small and light, and had fully independent suspension, a rear-mounted transaxle, and an early form of rack-and-pinion steering. The Brits would prefer that everybody forget all that...
@@jlwilliams No, the WHOLE WORLD forgot about the Corelian. No single country tried to airbrush it out of history. It seemingly managed to relegate iteself to obscurity quite happily, without the help of anybody else . There is no point to a "radical" design, if its importance is not recognized and adopted on a wide scale. The same with the Vikings, who discovered America, long before Colombus. Unfortunately, they forgot to tell anybody else, unlike Columbus!
That's funny, "the Vikings, who discovered America." Who was fully occupying the Americas from furthest land north to the furthest south when the Vikings made their tentative excursion? Who was here before them? And they might not have been the first.
every time i see or hear coln chapman i can't help thinking of ERIC IDLE playing the sleazy used care salesman on monty python
Back when Mclaren could build a winning car... Ah the nostalgia
0:48 Personally I've got quite fed up with this story of the "Giant" Ferrari.
Up to 1969, when the big money from FIAT started coming in, there was no Giant at all, but just a man who carefully chose its engineers and directed both his own Firm and "Scuderia" with iron hand. Racing and wins made selling cars, and selling cars made the money for racing, and that's all, like it or not.
What's best about this are the interviews. A much better presentation might have been to just let them go on and illustrate what they talking about with archival video and stills.
Yes, the dramatisation approach is embarrassing and merely insults the intelligence of and wastes the time of the more serious viewer.
This title is incredibly misleading, British manufacturers literally dominated the 60’s, Cooper and BRM, Lotus, Brabham (While made in Adelaide was based in Britain), and Matra won 8 out of the 10 WDC, only Ferrari won the other 2
It might be a good idea to get someone who actually knows about F1 to write the story.
This is about as accurate a presentation of the true facts, as the description of a 200 person football hooligan pub fight after the thing has ended and in their own words!
Minutes from victory.
Why spoil an excellent documentary?
Jim fell out 20 laps from the end of the race.
Sure, the British Mafia, never gets old!
What brought the entire British motor industry to nothing, unreliability, it's what Britain excels at.
Lots
Of
Trouble
Usually
Serious
0:49 funny he says "they came up with a design that rewrote the rules book:. F1 run by British kept rewriting the rule book to screw anything others came up with till England was on top. With the corruption in the F1 organization I don't doubt Ferrari paid to allow their designs and win.
This was the FIA in the early 1960s, and it was dominated by the French at the time. It wasn't until 1974 with the setting up of the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) that things started to change. There was a long period of warfare between Jean-Marie Balestre, the president of the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone, head of FOCA which ran well into the 1990s. It was only in 1993 that Max Mosley became president of the FIA. It certainly had nothing to do with the regulation of F1 when the Lotus 25 was conceived.
Cooper was arguably more influentual
LOL. "Chapman's" very not-fake mustache.
Sad. And Colin was such a dashing looking man. It added to the sense of story when you're talking about Lotus.
What I most disliked about this programme was the poor period recreation. Why not just use photos of the real people?
Chapman was a brilliant engineer but he had no regard for the safety of his great drivers . He killed Clark,Rindt,and others . His theory was make it as light as possible and then only when it broke he would strenghten it . I know because I had a Lotus 51.They used the same chassis for many other formula cars. Mine had the water coolant running thru the frame. Boy that would burn the shit out of the drivers so he used his customers to do his R. and D. development . Had he lived then he would still be charged with murder.But I still wish that I still had that shit box for vintage racing.A couple of yr's ago I received a phone call from a guy in California that is still Racing it today . He even welded up the frame so that it would carry water,,,,,,,,,,Owch !
Proper.
What is the problem with getting someone who actually knows the subject, to check the facts,? the article is riddled with very obvious misinformation.
Jim Clark.
1962! Ferrari! You’ve got to be joking. I was under the impression that Graham Hill in a BRM won that championship. Ok, the first year of the 1.5 formula was won by Ferrari. Also Lotus didn’t win the first year of the next formula; 1966 was Brabham in a Brabham and 1967 Denny Hulme, ditto. I still think Chapman’s real genius was the change to Indy cars, ask AJ Foyt.
I have to agree with the comments pointing out the massive omissions and inaccuracies in this clip and even at Indy I believe it was Jack Brabham and John Cooper who started the transition from front to rear(mid) engined cars.
And then there was the South African who designed, built and drove a homemade car in Formula one all by himself :)
@Tediuki Suzuki LDS automobiles, qualified for 5 grand prix races, no podium finishes, the one made in the Alberton Hotel garage used a modified Alfa Romeo Gulietta 1.5litre dohc straight four engine. Coincidentaly my formula 1 racing motorcycle was built from an old police Suzuki GT750 water bus. Its rider also obtained no podium finishes and never progressed beyond a novice licence :).
Any relation to you?
Gordon Murray didn't compete in F1, only in the SA National Championship.
This film is riddled with misinformation, where can I start, it's basically the Lotus story, nothing to do with the British rise in F1, by the time Lotus had even won a race in F1 Vanwall and Cooper was dominant, winning the constructors title in 1958, 1959 and 1960, BRM was to follow suit.
As for Lotus battling it out with Ferrari and Mercedes, well they never raced against Mercedes ever, Mercedes withdrew after 1954 and 1955.
If you are going to make a programme, it's best to get someone who knows something about the subject to assist.
hahaha.....small things like wheels coming off mainly..........brilliant.
Cooper? BRM? Bad research on this show...
This really is a bloody awful programme. It utterly misrepresents the development of motor racing in post war Britain and does a HUGE disserrvice to John Cooper and many other innovators who existed on the scene at the time. Chapman's genius existed in a context and the extent to which this programme airbrushes out the others is utterly scandalous.
I so dislike the Snow dynasty - father and son sound like the very early newscasters - simplistic, xenophobic, and so patronising. It is about time that ordinary folk, and so many of us have the intelligence to do this kind of stuff, get the opportunity to comment on history.
I bloody well agree wholeheartedly!
A bit of a Lotus propaganda film - LOL - no mention of e,g, BRM which actually won the world championship in 1962 with G. Hill at the wheel. Also one might add that Cooper introduced the concept of rear-engined cars - probably as much or more of an advance as the chassis designs described here.
Many inaccuracies and omissions . I didn't find it very true to what was actually going on. Many racing journalists have done a proper job on the subject , in print . It sounded like a typical Snow runs the show BBC progammentry with crummy period props , fake moustaches and made up nonsense that looks dramatic .
aya !!! spot the draughtsmans pencil no draughtsman wld ever use! I hate these dramatisations for such basic errors .... and Dan theres no such thing as a 'cog' in precision machinery 19:55
Stop whingeing. I was a draughtsman at Lotus in the 90s, and I used all types of pens and pencils. Wood pencils are good for sketching and for rough layouts that aren't going to be issued.
Rather disingenuous. The word Cooper is never mentioned, let alone Vanwall. I think Cooper and their (then) revolutionary rear engined car won the F1 title in 1959 and 1960, three years before Lotus. So why has Windsor disappeared them down the memory hole?
Chapman did not invent the monocoque. Look at an old steam road roller. The boiler is a rigid tube onto which the steering and front wheels are attached at the front and the firebox, cab and rear wheels at the back. Damn clever these Edwardians. Not taking anything away from Chapman and his team though. Well done ... err .... until DeLorean that is.
I didn't know the steam roller wasn't invented until the 20th century!
Screw Enzo Ferrari. All hype and trashtalking by gutter-snipes. They can't touch British motorsport.
Did you know Enzo Ferrari has been dead since 1988?
who is this aimed at ? 8 yearold jingoistic kids ?
brexit show
this is overly patriotic ... there is no need for brits to overact their importance on motorpsort and f1 in general - more than half the current f1 teams have their HQ in the UK
while i personally didnt find any wrong facts, the presentation was, to be honest, lackluster ... for example did lotus never battle mercedes in F1 ... mercedes was active in 54/55 while lotus joined 58, then team lotus unfortunately left f1 after the 94 season while mercedes as a team didnt rejoin until 2010 (they joined f1 as a engine supplier to the swiss Sauber team in 93) - and in general lotus mainly battled other british teams ... in the early 60s the regular startes where ferrari (italy), lotus (UK), cooper (UK) BRM(UK) and with only one works car to the 2 or 3 of the other teams, porsche (germany), so it was already britian dominated, and that revolution began with the cooper team and its mid engined cars, while lotus still ran traditional front engined cars
also, to anyone who has ever seen film or images of the real colin chapman, the person in this film does not like colin chapman in the slightest (not to mention that the mustache just looks fake full stop)
What bullshit. You have been Snowed.
If it was reliable it wouldn't be British would it , it would be Japanese .
You have NO clue what you are talking about.
A poor show. No mention of Vanwall, BRM or Cooper who all had world championships before the Lotus 25. The European dominance had long gone by the 60's and Ferrari had spasmodic success from then until Schumachers era with them.
The documentary series was about specific British vehicles, which were radical in design. Not about groups of vehicles.