Lotus 81
Constructor: | lotus | ||||||||
Designer: |
Colin Chapman Peter Wright Martin Ogilvie |
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Predecessor: | Lotus 80 | ||||||||
Successor: | Lotus 87 | ||||||||
Technical specifications | |||||||||
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Chassis: | Aluminum alloy monocoque | ||||||||
Wheelbase: | 2773 mm | ||||||||
Weight: | 575 kg | ||||||||
Tires: | Goodyear | ||||||||
Petrol: | Essex | ||||||||
statistics | |||||||||
Driver: |
Mario Andretti Elio de Angelis Nigel Mansell |
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First start: | 1980 Argentine Grand Prix | ||||||||
Last start: | 1980 U.S. Grand Prix | ||||||||
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World Cup points: | 15th | ||||||||
Podiums: | 1 | ||||||||
Leadership laps: | - |
The Lotus 81 was a Formula 1 racing car from the British racing team Lotus , which was used in the 1980 Formula 1 season .
Technical specifications
Lotus 81
At the end of 1978 team boss Colin Chapman came to the conclusion that he had exhausted the technical potential of the Lotus 79 . So he began to design a new car, which was named Lotus 80 . However, the vehicle turned out to be non-competitive due to structural defects. For his new racing car, he combined the chassis of the Lotus 80 with components from the Lotus 79. The prototype was named Lotus 79X . The result was the Lotus 81, a rather conservative ground-effect vehicle, which from the start was only intended as a temporary solution until the Lotus 88 was completed.
Compared to the Lotus 80, the new racing car had a significantly reinforced chassis, which inevitably led to an increase in the overall weight and thus poor driving behavior. The top speed on the straights was also unsatisfactory. The monocoque itself was made of an aluminum alloy and the cockpit was kept narrower. Further visual changes compared to the predecessor vehicle were a shortened vehicle front and redesigned side pods. Another problem with the vehicle was that the rear tires developed little grip, which was eventually remedied by changing the suspension on the rear axle.
The Lotus 81 was powered by a Ford-Cosworth DFV. The water-cooled, non-supercharged eight-cylinder V-engine with a 90 ° bank angle and a displacement of 2993 cm³ developed around 470 hp (345 kW) at a speed of around 11,100 rpm. The manually shifted, longitudinally installed Lotus / Hewland gearbox had five forward gears and one reverse gear. The vehicle's tank held 175 liters. All wheels were individually suspended from double wishbones . The shock absorbers were obtained from Koni .
Lotus 81B
The Lotus 81B differed only insignificantly from the predecessor vehicle, especially in its wheelbase of now 2819 mm. The track width was 1803 mm at the front and 1676 mm at the rear. The vehicle weighed 588 kg and the Ford-Cosworth engine developed around 490 hp (360 kW) with unchanged displacement.
sponsor
The main sponsors of the team were the oil company Essex - hence the blue-red paintwork - and the Swiss watch manufacturer Tissot .
Season course
1980
The young Italian Elio de Angelis joined Mario Andretti in 1980 after Carlos Reutemann had left Lotus after just one year. De Angelis achieved the best race result of the 81 when he finished second in the Brazilian Grand Prix earlier in the season . The future world champion Nigel Mansell made his Formula 1 debut at the Austrian Grand Prix in 81. At the end of the season, de Angelis was seventh in the world championship. Andretti only achieved a single point and moved to Alfa Romeo at the end of the year .
driver | No. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14th | Points | rank |
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1980 Formula 1 season | 15th | 5. | |||||||||||||||
M. Andretti | 11 | DNF | DNF | 12 | DNF | DNF | 7th | DNF | DNF | 7th | DNF | 8th | DNF | DNF | 6th | ||
E. de Angelis | 12 | DNF | 2 | DNF | DNF | 10 | 9 | DNF | DNF | 16 | 6th | DNF | 4th | 10 | 4th | ||
N. Mansell | 43 | DNF | DNF |
1981
After the Lotus 88 was banned, Chapman's team had to contest the start of the 1981 Formula 1 season with the Lotus 81B before it could be replaced by the Lotus 87 from Monaco . Mansell achieved a podium finish in a World Championship run for the first time in his career at the Belgian Grand Prix with the Lotus 81.
driver | No. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14th | 15th | Points | rank |
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1981 Formula 1 season | 22nd | 7th | ||||||||||||||||
E. de Angelis | 11 | DNF | 5 | 6th | 5 | |||||||||||||
N. Mansell | 12 | DNF | 11 | DNF | 3 |
Legend | ||
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colour | abbreviation | meaning |
gold | - | victory |
silver | - | 2nd place |
bronze | - | 3rd place |
green | - | Placement in the points |
blue | - | Classified outside the point ranks |
violet | DNF | Race not finished (did not finish) |
NC | not classified | |
red | DNQ | did not qualify |
DNPQ | failed in pre-qualification (did not pre-qualify) | |
black | DSQ | disqualified |
White | DNS | not at the start (did not start) |
WD | withdrawn | |
Light Blue | PO | only participated in the training (practiced only) |
TD | Friday test driver | |
without | DNP | did not participate in the training (did not practice) |
INJ | injured or sick | |
EX | excluded | |
DNA | did not arrive | |
C. | Race canceled | |
no participation in the World Cup | ||
other | P / bold | Pole position |
SR / italic | Fastest race lap | |
* | not at the finish, but counted due to the distance covered |
|
() | Streak results | |
underlined | Leader in the overall standings |
literature
- Jean-François Krause: Vehicle data sheet : Lotus 81-Ford V8. Again faulty. In: The large Formula 1 archive , Weltbild Verlag Augsburg, o. P.
- Anthony Pritchard: Lotus: The Competition Cars-All the Racing Type Numbers from 1947 to the Modern Era , Haynes Publishing Sparkford 2006, ISBN 978-1-84425-006-6 , pp. 174 f., 254.
- Ulrich Schwab: Grand Prix. The races for the 1980 automobile world championship , Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 978-3-87943-751-1 , pp. 36-38.
- Ulrich Schwab: Grand Prix. The races for the Automobile World Championship 1981. , Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart 1981, ISBN 978-3-87943-821-1 , pp. 26-28.