Lotus 96
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| Constructor: |
 lotus
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| Designer: |
Gérard Ducarouge Mike Coughlan |
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| Predecessor: | - | ||||||||
| Successor: | - | ||||||||
| Technical specifications | |||||||||
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| Chassis: | Monocoque made of fiber composite material and aluminum | ||||||||
| Wheelbase: | 2800 mm | ||||||||
| Weight: | 676 kg | ||||||||
| Tires: | Goodyear | ||||||||
| statistics | |||||||||
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| World Cup points: | - | ||||||||
| Podiums: | - | ||||||||
| Leadership laps: | - | ||||||||
The Lotus 96 , sometimes incorrectly called the Lotus 96T, was a projected Champ Car for the British racing team Lotus , which was intended for use in the 1984 CART season .
background
The Champ Car series , which was growing in popularity in the United States, prompted Roy Winkelmann to come up with the idea of competing with his own team in 1984 . To realize his project, he commissioned Lotus to design a chassis specially tailored for the cart series, especially because he hoped the know-how of the traditional British team from Norfolk would give him a competitive advantage over the competition from Lola and March . Lotus team boss Peter Warr then commissioned chief designer Gérard Ducarouge to develop such a vehicle, which he then realized together with Mike Coughlan under the name Lotus 96 .
Technical specifications
The Lotus 96 was essentially based on the blueprints of the Lotus 95T . However, it was larger, more torsion-resistant and its basic elements had been reinforced, which made the entire construction appear more robust. The monocoque was made of sandwich panels with a core made of aluminum honeycomb and outer layers made of synthetic resin reinforced with carbon and aramid fibers . The suspension with double wishbones also came from the Lotus 95T and was reinforced accordingly. The Lotus 96 was powered by a 2.65 liter Ford Cosworth V8 turbo engine (type designation DFX). The manually shifted, longitudinally installed Lotus / Hewland gearbox had five forward gears and one reverse gear.
The project was discontinued after it became known that the cart organization would refuse approval of the racing car and that Winkelmann could no longer raise the necessary sponsorship money.
Painting
The Lotus 96 was painted in British Racing Green .
literature
- 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. 189, 255