Car · Team Lotus · 1981
Lotus 88B
Ground-effect cars had to run rock-hard suspension to keep the skirts sealed, which by 1981 was punishing enough to hurt drivers. Chapman's answer separated the two jobs. Rival teams protested that the sprung outer body was a movable aerodynamic device; the car was excluded from three race weekends and never started a Grand Prix. It is the clearest case in the sport's history of a rule stopping a genuinely good idea, and Chapman's disgust at it is usually read as the beginning of the end of Lotus.
- Seasons
- 1981
- Entries
- 0
- Wins
- 0
- Poles
- 0
- Fastest laps
- 0
One of the design family that has a specified page of its own.
Why it mattered
The idea. Two chassis, one inside the other: the outer one takes the aerodynamic load and runs stiff, the inner one carries the driver and rides softly
New on this car. The twin-chassis principle, and one of the first extensive uses of carbon fibre in a chassis
What it did. Never raced. Ran in practice at Long Beach, Rio and Silverstone in 1981 and was excluded each time.
Specification
- Chassis
- Twin-chassis construction
- Front suspension
- Top rocker arms, lower wishbones, inboard springs
- Rear suspension
- As front
- Brakes
- disc
- Gearbox
- Lotus/Hewland
- Gears
- 5-speed
- Tyres
- Michelin/Goodyear
- Fuel
- —
- Engine
- Cosworth DFV
- Configuration
- V8
- Capacity
- 2,993 cc
- Aspiration
- naturally aspirated
- Power
- —
- Power note
- —
- Weight
- —
- Wheelbase
- 2,178 mm
- Track, front
- 1,778 mm
- Track, rear
- 1,600 mm
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.
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
- 81 / 87
- Successor
- 91
- Races (published)
- 0
- Wins (published)
- 0
- Poles (published)
- 0
- Confidence
- reference
- Specification source
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_88
- Register source
- https://github.com/f1db/f1db