Gunnar Nilsson took his one and only F1 win on this day at the 1977 Belgian GP, and he did so in the remarkably innovative Lotus 78. The ground effect car proved a landmark machine for Colin Chapman and his team, setting an F1 aerodynamic revolution in motion, as Doug Nye emphasises in today's Great Read
Colin Chapman was used to ringing the bell, to being the king of the hill. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s his Formula 1 car concepts most consistently set new standards. In 1960 his Lotus 18 had been the best of the rear-engined bunch, though not the most reliable. In 1962 his Lotus 25 established the modern monocoque-chassis single-seater theme. In 1967 the truncated chassis, DFV-engined Lotus 49 set new standards. And from the wedge-profile, four-wheel-drive, gas-turbine-engined Lotus 56 at Indy in 1968 came the door-stop Formula 1 Lotus 72 of the early 1970s.
But through the summer of 1975, Team Lotus found itself in deep trouble. The potential of its long-outstanding Type 72s had been exhausted, not least due to divergent development of the latest generation of Goodyear tyres...
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