The COAT - Round Two - Lotus 72 vs Red Bull RB7

[crmalcolm]

The fifteenth match in Round Two sees the Lotus 72 take on the Red Bull RB7.

The Lotus took a 5-2 win in Round One over the Williams FW08, whilst the Red Bull defeated the Williams FW18 4-3.

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.

Red Bull RB7 (planetf1.com):
The RB7 took Sebastian Vettel to his second consecutive Drivers’ Championship, becoming the youngest double champ in F1 history. The car won 12 of the 19 races that season, and claimed all bar one pole position during the campaign. Between Vettel and Mark Webber, the 19 races saw 27 podium finishes for Red Bull.

The 2011 season was also the first to see the introduction of the Drag Reduction System, meaning Red Bull had to bring in the “rear wing flap” while designing the car as well. The team finished with 650 points in the teams’ standings, more than 150 ahead of McLaren, while Vettel was a record 122 points clear in the Drivers’ Championship.

[S griffin]

The RB7 was probably more dominant than it looked. The Lotus 72 was a great car, although it wasn’t something anyone can drive, as Dave Walker could tell you