The COAT - SF - Lotus 72 vs McLaren MP4/4

[crmalcolm]

The first of the semi-finals is ready to begin, which sees the Lotus 72 take on the McLaren MP4/4.

The Lotus knocked out the Brawn BGP 001 7-1 in the quarter-finals, whilst the McLaren took a 6-3 victory over the Maserati 250F.

Lotus 72 (goodwood.com):
Seventy-five races and 20 wins does not sound that impressive in the present company. But the Lotus 72 has an ace up its sleeve. It won three Constructors’ Championships and two Drivers’ Championships in six seasons of racing and its 20 victories are spread out over five seasons, not just one. The Lotus 72 is a special racing car.

A complete innovation when it was launched, with inboard brakes, side-mounted radiators, and an overhead air intake the 72 was possibly Colin Chapman’s masterpiece. The wedge shape was a departure from the cigar-style Formula 1 cars that had preceded it, and was inspired by the pure-wedge form of the Lotus 56 IndyCar. At first it wasn’t quite right, with the anti-dive and anti-squat suspension (designed to stop the nose dipping under braking or the back squatting down under acceleration) causing issues for the drivers, but after some modification the car was unstoppable. The 72 made its debut in the middle of the 1970 season and, after retiring from his first race with it, Jochen Rindt proceeded to reel off four wins in a row. Sadly a crash at Monza robbed the world of Rindt, but he and the 72 had already been dominant enough that he won the title posthumously. In the penultimate race of the season, in a perfect memorial to Rindt, and foreshadowing what was to come, Emerson Fittipaldi took the car’s fifth victory. 1971 was a fallow year, as the car developed through the 72C to become the 72D, complete with iconic John Player Special livery. In 1972 Fittipaldi took five wins and the title, in ‘73 he took three, Ronnie Petersen another four and Lotus won the constructors' title. Petersen would take three more wins for the 72, now in 72E form in 1974, before the car struggled in ’75, while the 77 was developed for Lotus’s next F1 revolution.

No other car has had such longevity of success as the 72. It holds the record for the longest time between first and last victories for an F1 chassis, and to be competitive for five consecutive seasons (and race on for a sixth) seems mind-boggling in the world of pretty-much disposable racing cars we live in today. If you were amazed that the F2002, 500 and 158’s careers spanned across a couple of seasons, the 72 is in a completely different world.

McLaren MP4/4 (goodwood.com):
The McLaren MP4/4 is, statistically, the best F1 car of all time. In the 1988 F1 season, in the hands of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, the MP4/4 won 15 of the 16 races, only missing out on the complete set at the Italian Grand Prix when Prost’s Honda engine let go and Senna was then removed from the race while lapping Jean-Louis Schlesser’s Williams. The weekend after Enzo Ferrari died, even McLaren had to feel OK with losing that one win to Ferrari.

But for the rest of the season the MP4/4 was imperious in a way never seen before or since. It holds a 93.8 per cent victory rate.

Coming toward the end of the first turbo F1 era, McLaren’s first step toward the total dominance of the MP4/4 had been to basically steal the engine supply of its nearest rival. Williams had won the last two Constructors’ Championships with Honda power, while McLaren’s time using a privateer engine, financed in house, built by Porsche, had been initially successful, but was gradually being overtaken by the better financed manufacturer engines. Secured with the best engine on the grid McLaren now needed a chassis to match. Here we introduce not only McLaren chief designer, American Steve Nicholls, who designed the car, but also South African Technical Director, Gordon Murray, a name with which you may be familiar. Between them they clothed the Honda V6 in a chassis and body that proved well beyond anything its rivals could come close to. Prost won seven races, Senna won eight, and the Brazilian secured his first of three F1 championships.

[S griffin]

The McLaren MP4/4 probably was only dominant because it had the two best drivers in the best car. That said it’s still a piece of engineering genius

[chillibowl]

i had a very similar looking poster on my wall. MP4/4.