Team Lotus - hard times

Even as I write the words, I cannot bring myself to believe them. For 30 years a subconscious thought in my head has been that if Ferrari and Lotus are competitive, all is essentially right with the Grand Prix world. This has had no basis in logic for a long time, I concede, for Lotus victories have been in short supply for a decade and more; nevertheless, I always hoped - indeed, assumed - that one day the team would be back in its rightful place.

As it is, there seems little chance of the marque being represented when the transporters are unloaded in Phoenix next March. We have the prospect of a Footwork taking on a Leyton House, and perhaps eventually - given the curious Japanese fixation with offbeat English - a Blenheim Palace will battle with a Fingerprint. But the name of Lotus, with its ironically oriental connotations, will be absent.

Recently I have been involved in the making of a film, due to be to shown on BBC2 sometime over Christmas, which celebrates some of the highlights of the 500 races which have counted for the World Championship since its inception in 1950. In the course of the project I have watched a good deal of film footage, and in so doing found that the significance of various marques, various men, found their own perspective, so that I finished up with a mental relief map of Grand Prix history these 40 years past. And one of the peaks, of course, bore the name of Lotus.

Hardly surprising, really, with the bullying genius of Colin Chapman at the helm, and such as Clark, Rindt, Fittipaldi, Peterson and Andretti in the cockpit. In the eight years since Chapman's death, Lotus has won but seven Grands Prix, yet still stand third, behind Ferrari and McLaren, in the all-time victory list.

Ironically, it was not a factory car which scored the first Lotus win, but Rob Walker's private entry in the Monaco Grand Prix of 1960, driven by Stirling Moss, who went on to take Lotus's second victory, and third, and fourth. Not until the last race of '61, in the USA, did a works car triumph, in the hands of Innes Ireland - whom Chapman promptly sacked. For Colin, the future was Jimmy Clark.

To this day Innes is bitter, not only about the fact of his dismissal, but also the manner of it, for he learned of it second-hand. Chapman, for all his undoubted ruthlessness, was sometimes uncharacteristically diffident when it came to confronting the unpalatable.

Lotus, in those early days, had a deserved name for innovation - and an equally justified one for frailty. Moss crashed terribly in practice at Spa in 1960, and was also in a Lotus when he suffered the accident which ended his career, at Goodwood two years later. "Even now," Stirling told me recently, "I'm wary of the name. Some years ago, I was tempted by an offer to do some Historic races with a Lotus 16 - which, in terms of speed, was very much the thing to have. But I thought about it, and then turned it down..."

It was a brave man who set off in a Lotus around Spa-Francorchamps 30 years or so ago. "The cars were so quick you could reasonably expect to be on pole position," Moss says, "if you made it round the lap..."

Early Lotus road cars had the same reputation. In early 1969, at 22, I bought a new Elan, which was trouble from the day of its delivery. Any journey of more than 50 miles became an act of faith. In the end, I gave in, sold it and replaced it with... another Elan. Same story, so I also got rid of that one - and replaced it with... you guessed.

By now you may be thinking here was someone barely on speaking terms with commonsense, and you would be right. But it was like going back to an obsessive affair, every time knowing it could never work. The problem was, when all was well with one or other of my Elans, it was driving pleasure as I have never known before or since. The other side of the coin was sleeping in the car by a deserted road near Bordeaux, driveshaft coupling broken. Again.

The twin-cam engines ran sweetly, but devoured oil, a point I made, years later, to Chapman. "Of course they did!" he replied. "What the hell d'you think was lubricating them?" I began to feel it was my fault. "What you want to be wary of," he added, darkly, "is an engine that doesn't use any oil..." Arguing with Colin could be like folding a paper in a high wind.

The years of real Lotus greatness were those when Jimmy Clark was there. One of his supernatural talent would have dominated with a car as quick as anyone else's, but Chapman nearly always gave him something more, and in those circumstances the rest were effectively wasting their time. Week in, week out, all Jimmy had to do was show up.

It made for inordinately boring racing, of course, but still there was an intense pleasure in watching a man so evidently on a separate plane from his contemporaries - the more so when that man was also a good fellow, well aware of his supremacy, yet never tying himself in psychological knots about it. With Clark, it was natural, flowing, free; there was no false arrogance, and no need of it, either.

Chapman never felt the same about motor racing after Jimmy's death, but still there were further peaks in Lotus's racing history. Although there was never any real bond between Colin and Jochen Rindt, still they contrived to produce something memorable. There were days, in 1969 and 1970, when I felt immeasurably proud as I drove home from Silverstone or Brands in my Lotus.

As I queued to leave Paul Ricard in the summer of 1971, the last of my Elans oiled a plug. A couple of minutes later I noticed Chapman, with Fittipaldi, in a hire car nearby. Emerson had finished third that afternoon, and Colin was in a good mood.

"It's gone onto three cylinders," I wailed. "Rev it!" he suggested. "Right up to the limiter, and hold it there for a bit. That'll clear it..."

"It hasn't got a limiter," I said. "I had the engine balanced, and the limiter removed..."

"Bloody hell!" the Lotus boss replied, a broad smirk on his face. "You're a brave bugger..."

The great thing about Colin, though, was that if he expected you to take a tolerant approach to the shortcomings of his products, so also he would cheerfully accept written criticism of his race cars. His sense of humour would be invaluable in the paddocks of today. I remember him with affection, and also a tremendous awe. "Working with him was no trip to Paris," Mario Andretti recalls, "but you're always going to have problems with a genius, right?"

Andretti's was the last great Lotus era, in particular that summer of 1978, when he and Ronnie Peterson humbled the rest by the simple expedient of running ground effect cars a year before anyone else. The beautiful 79 was, for me, the summit of Lotus art, elegant, superior - yet never totally to be relied upon.

After that, the wins were spasmodic, to put it kindly. Elio de Angelis got to the line a foot or so in front of Keke Rosberg at the Osterreichring in 1982, and at the end of that year Chapman died. Thereafter Lotus changed out of sight, just as Ferrari has since Enzo's death. It is no surprise that these two men shared a mutual respect which extended to no others in their business. In racing terms, they were truly the last of the great actor-managers.

Many times I have idly considered how things might have been if Chapman had been around during the Senna years at Lotus. Theirs, I suspect, would have been a... tempestuous relationship, let's say. I have my doubts that Ayrton would have been allowed to take over quite to the extent that he did, I must say. Apart from anything else, for Colin anyone after Clark would have been, at best, the second greatest driver there had ever been, and treated accordingly. Senna, I fancy, would have been on the end of rather more straight talking than he has been accustomed to facing.

Imagine, though, how the two of them would have sparked off each other! Chapman always needed that, the presence of a Clark or Rindt or Andretti to inspire him to the full, and Senna, too, would have responded to Colin's drive and genius. Who knows, he might never have gone to McLaren.

A daydream, though. Ayrton won in the 'active suspension' Honda-powered 99T at Monaco and Detroit in 1987, since when there has been not a sniff of victory. I loved the cars in red and gold, black and gold, most of all in green. I have loathed them in custard yellow, but more than that I hate the thought of their not being there any more. A lot of Formula 1 teams you wouldn't notice by their absence. But not this one.