Lotus 97T
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| Constructor: |
 lotus
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| Designer: | Gérard Ducarouge | ||||||||
| Predecessor: | Lotus 95T | ||||||||
| Successor: | Lotus 98T | ||||||||
| Technical specifications | |||||||||
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| Chassis: | Monocoque made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic | ||||||||
| Wheelbase: | 2720 mm | ||||||||
| Weight: | 540 kg | ||||||||
| Tires: | Goodyear | ||||||||
| Petrol: | Eleven | ||||||||
| statistics | |||||||||
| Driver: |
 Elio de Angelis Ayrton Senna
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| First start: | 1985 Brazilian Grand Prix | ||||||||
| Last start: | 1985 Australian Grand Prix | ||||||||
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| World Cup points: | 71 | ||||||||
| Podiums: | 9 | ||||||||
| Leadership laps: | 286 over 1397 km | ||||||||
The Lotus 97T was a Formula 1 racing car from the British racing team Lotus , which was used in the 1985 Formula 1 season .
Technical specifications
The racing car was a development of the Lotus chief designer Gérard Ducarouge and essentially a further development of the previous year's car. While the suspension with double wishbones at the front and rear and the braking system had been adopted almost unchanged from the Lotus 95T , the track width of the new vehicle was 1800 mm at the front and 1620 mm at the rear. In addition, the exhaust air no longer emerged above the side pods, but through a rearrangement of the water and oil coolers to the side. The air baffles behind the front wheels, which channel the air and thus generate less air turbulence, were new. The monocoque was made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic .
The Lotus 97T was powered by a water-cooled V6 turbo engine from Renault with a 90 ° cylinder bank angle, whereby two different types were used. While the EF4B was mainly used in training because it withstood a higher boost pressure, the EF15 was mainly used in races. The longitudinally mounted with Garrett equipped -Ladern twin turbo - mid engine was 1493 cc, and brought to 2.5 bar at a limited boost pressure and 11,300 / min output of up to 662 kW. The power transmission was taken over by a manually shiftable 5-speed transmission from Hewland . The ignition system was obtained from Magneti Marelli . The tank held 220 liters.
sponsor
The main sponsors were the RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company with its cigarette brand John Player , which is why the vehicle was black with gold applications, as well as the household appliance manufacturer De'Longhi and the optics manufacturer Olympus .
Season course
The Lotus 97T was driven by Ayrton Senna and Elio de Angelis . They won three of 16 races of the season and took eight pole positions . The team took fourth place in the Constructor's Championship. Senna won his first of a total of 41 Grand Prix in the Lotus 97T in Estoril . The car was fast but unreliable. Several times the drivers fell out on the podium due to technical defects. This fate already overtook Senna at the season opener in Rio de Janeiro , who suffered electrical damage while in third place. In San Marino, on the other hand, Senna, who was also in third place at the time, ran out of gas, as did Silverstone , where he was in second place. The race at the Nürburgring stood out particularly negatively in this regard : Here de Angelis retired in third position with an engine failure, and Senna's car broke the half-wave when he was in the lead. After this race, however, the vehicles tended to be more reliable again, but in the last two races de Angelis and Senna suffered three engine failures combined, with Senna losing a possible second place in the last race in Adelaide . De Angelis was disqualified in this Grand Prix because of an overtaking maneuver on the formation lap.
| driver | No. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4th | 5 | 6th | 7th | 8th | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14th | 15th | 16 | Points | rank |
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| 1985 Formula 1 season |
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71 | 4th | |
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Elio de Angelis
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11 | 3 | 4th | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5 | 5 | NC | DNF | 5 | 5 | 6th | DNF | 5 | DNF | DSQ | ||
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Ayrton Senna
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12 | DNF | 1 | 7 * | DNF | 16 | DNF | DNF | 10 * | DNF | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | DNF | DNF | ||
| 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 |
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| () | Streak results | |
| underlined | Leader in the overall standings | |
literature
- Jean-François Krause: Vehicle data sheet : Lotus 97T-Renault V6. Back to success! 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. 190, 255.
- Ulrich Schwab: Grand Prix. The races for the Automobile World Championship 1985. , Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 978-3-613-01077-2 , p. 24 f.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lotus 97T Grand Prix Race. In: motorsportarchiv.de. Archived from the original on March 22, 2007 ; accessed on December 13, 2018 .
