1977 Spanish Grand Prix BBC Highlights

I find the 1977 Lotus 78 mind blowing, its a pure cold war fighter a sort of inverted Hawker Hunter F6 of 1962. Chapman design motif was how illegal can I make it and run it supposedly withing the confines of the rule book. The Ensign driven by Regazzoni N177 not much diffferent from Amons N175 or MN176 also driven by Ickx is always a sort of Lotus being essentially what would have ben the last conventional :Lotus if Chapman had not opted for ground effects- which in some ways eventually destroyed real racing and passing

Hesketh got it wrong about Jim Clark's comments; they weren't about Mario but were about Dan Gurney.

No wonder they got Murray Walker in to commentate for the next season….

5:40 Merely one month and three days after Kyalami I bet Zorzi remembered very well what his other engine failure triggered in South Africa and this time chose to enter the pits instead...

The Ensign is very fast and fragile, and there are sections where Regga if past his best manoevers brilliantly- he lacked a good Nicholson Cosworth at Monza, but here at Jaram' a will be using a backyard built essentially Aroura G8 mod third hand mill and 50 hp down on what Hunt or Andretti would have and that all Amon's and Ickx had the previous year. It s takes genius to pass with lack of grunt. Without the money Lotgs would have tp service this sort of car the Ensign is pretty fragile and when thinks broke Amon, Ickx, Tamby and Regga all had potentially terrible accident when something broke. my view is Chapman had a lot of influence on Mo Nunn in his driver selection and even many of its later pilots Henton, Geoff Lee were very much people Chapman wanted to test. In 11975 Louts number one Ronnie Peterson seriously oonsidered testing the Ensign N175 and its main driver that year Von Lepp was a greatly under rated driver and I doubt if Amon would have been quicker at Ricard or the Ring. I also suspect if Chapman had realised how fast the car would have been in Amons hands with a good Cosworth he might have delayed ground effects introduction for a few year, Still in a way the Lotus 78 is a masterpiece with every setting like a fighter plane with electronic and wing settings of various levells of deception

5:00 Patrick Neve in the first race for Williams. RIP Sir Frank

2:16

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