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At the back end of 1969, Lotus boss Colin Chapman removed himself from the day-to-day running of his growing organisation, locked himself away and set to roughing out the design of the following year's grand prix challenger. What he emerged with after two weeks were the first sketches of an innovative racing machine that became the type 72.
Some have claimed that the Lotus 72, powered by Cosworth's increasingly ubiquitous DFV, was a game-changer. Yet it didn't send the opposition racing back to the drawing board in the same way as the type 78 and 79 ground-effect chassis did later in the 1970s.
There's a stronger argument that it was the first modern F1 car: no longer cigar-tube in shape, its layout and architecture remain familiar to this day. But what's indisputable is its place among the all-time greatest GP cars. The 72 took Team Lotus to a pair of drivers' world championships, three constructors' titles and 20 GP victories over a protracted six-year lifespan.
