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How a champion turned "rubbish bin" came back to life

For 40 years, the crumpled wreckage of Lotus 72/5 remained untouched in a Hethel hangar. Now, Classic Team Lotus has breathed new life into the car dubbed 'Old Faithful' that took Emerson Fittipaldi to his 1972 world championship title

Formula 1's youngest world champion sat trapped aboard his Lotus 72, feet pinched and ankles badly bruised. It would be 20 minutes before Emerson Fittipaldi was freed; a painful blow for his title defence, which had been ignited by successive wins in the 1973 season-opening Argentinian and Brazilian Grands Prix.

Come the Dutch race, round 10 of 15, the 26-year-old needed to bounce back after two straight retirements. He was on course to do just that, and was topping the qualifying times at Zandvoort behind the wheel of 72/5, in which he'd scored four world championship victories and a further three non-championship triumphs, making it the most successful of the 10 chassis built.

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Author Matt Kew

Matt Kew is Autosport’s F1 Editor, a role he has held since March 2022 following stints covering Formula E, Extreme E and the British Touring Car Championship.

Matt joined Autosport in 2018 to work predominantly on the magazine, but his relentless quoting of Alan Partridge meant office colleagues soon thought he would be better-suited to increased field work.

Needless to say, Matt had the last laugh when he won the Motorsport UK Young Journalist of the Year Award in 2019.

His interest in motorsport was sparked by regular trips to watch ASCAR crash around Rockingham’s banked oval.

Matt read politics and philosophy at the University of Sheffield - receiving first-class honours for his dissertation assessing the lack of female participation in top-tier motor racing.

He covered a wide variety of national race and rally meetings for Autosport as a freelancer before joining full-time. His best efforts to argue the merits of historic racing are undone by a questionable taste in music and James Bond actors.