Car · Team Lotus · 1970–1971

Lotus 72C

Twelve miles an hour quicker than the 49 on the same engine. The 72 raced for six seasons, which nothing else of its era managed, and it won the 1970 title for a driver who had died at Monza with four rounds to go - Rindt remains the only posthumous World Champion.

Seasons
1970–1971
Entries
0
Wins
0
Poles
0
Fastest laps
0
Constructors' titles
3
Drivers' titles
2

One of the design family that has a specified page of its own.

Why it mattered

The idea. Move the mass to the middle, get the radiators out of the nose, and make the whole car a wedge

New on this car. Side-mounted radiators in the sidepods, freeing the nose to be a pure aerodynamic wedge; inboard brakes to cut unsprung weight; torsion-bar suspension with anti-dive and anti-squat geometry

What it did. 75 races, 20 wins, 17 poles. Drivers' titles for Rindt (1970) and Fittipaldi (1972); constructors' in 1970, 1972 and 1973.

Designers
Colin Chapman, Maurice Philippe, Tony Rudd
Supersedes
lotus-49
Design life
1970–1975
Confidence
high

Specification

Chassis
Aluminium monocoque
Front suspension
Double wishbone, inboard spring/damper.
Rear suspension
Parallel top links, lower wishbones, twin radius arms, outboard spring/damper
Brakes
inboard disc
Gearbox
Hewland FG400
Gears
5-speed
Tyres
1970–1972, 1974: Firestone ; 1974: Goodyear
Fuel
1970–1971: Shell; 1972–1975: Texaco
Engine
Ford Cosworth DFV
Configuration
V8
Capacity
2,993 cc
Aspiration
naturally aspirated
Power
465 bhp
Power note
440-465 hp @ 10,000-10,800 rpm
Weight
—
Wheelbase
—
Track, front
—
Track, rear
—

A blank is a figure nobody published for this car. Where several teams quote the same number in a season it is usually the rule they were all built to rather than a measurement, so it is kept with the regulation limits instead of here.

0 wins can be traced to this chassis; its article publishes 20. Neither is wrong. A win counts here only where the entry list says which car the driver was in, and a team running two designs in a season does not always say. The unresolved seasons are listed below.

Seasons that cannot be attributed 2

Seasons that cannot be attributed
SeasonAlso entered by this constructor
1971lotus-56b+lotus-69-special
1974lotus-76
In these seasons the team ran more than one design and no source says which car raced which round, so the results are left unattributed rather than guessed.

Every entry 0 entries

No race entry in this database resolves here. That is usually a constructor that ran several designs in a season and no source saying which raced when, not a car that never raced.

Where this comes from

Constructor
Team Lotus
Predecessor
49 / 63
Successor
56B / 76 / 77
Races (published)
75
Wins (published)
20
Poles (published)
17
Confidence
reference
Specification source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_72
Register source
https://github.com/f1db/f1db