Bonhams has announced it's putting Mario Andretti's championship-winning Lotus 79 chassis No4 up for auction later this year. As respected F1 designer Gary Anderson explains in today's Great Read, the 79 was the best example of the sort of racing car that he likes best: brave, innovative, simple and capable of making its rivals look like also-rans straight out of the box
The Lotus 79, the first real ground effect car was a very, very good package, the first realisation that aerodynamics were becoming crucial and that you could make ground effects work. Everybody then began rushing around cutting and shutting existing designs. But of course you can't add ground effect if it's not in the existing concept.
When the 79 arrived, everybody was panicked into producing their own skirted ground effect car, not having realised what the 78 was pointing to the year before. Lotus had a year of investigation before anyone twigged, and it's the same today...
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