In recent years we are getting used to see in Formula 1 new teams that have a relatively ephemeral life (and in some cases we can directly take the adjective "ephemeral" as its life is more than short).
Projects like Marussia and Caterham in modern times and a little more distant in time as Super Aguri, Team Ensigne, Virgin, BAR, Jaguar, Jordan passed without pain or glory by the highest category of motorsport, others instead as Brawn, Benetton recorded a brief step but left their mark and others like Brabham and Lotus marked entire decades in Formula 1 giving it brightness and prestige.
Today I want to remember with the sports #hivers of this community the passage through Formula 1 of **Lotus**, its eccentric manager Colin Chapman (remember, he was the one who threw his cap in the air when his drivers crossed the finish line winning a race) and with one of its drivers considered the emblem of the team: Nigel Mansell.
Many of these carmakers have continued to produce their commercial vehicles even though they have stopped actively participating in Formula 1, as is the case of Lotus, while others, setting a trend that in this 2022 season sees Alpine and Aston Martin as examples, have decided to use F1 as a launching pad to boost the marketing of their commercial brands.
Some have left, others have left and have returned with all the brightness of that time as Mercedes, others want to be under the spotlight and the business that means being part of this sport that has millions of fans around the world as the two mentioned above and others instead have remained firm in their place as true stalwarts of this category as Ferrari.
It is difficult to participate in Formula 1 due to the enormous injection of technical and financial resources that this means, but it is even more difficult to remain.
### The foundation of the team and the mystery of the name.
Lotus was founded (female, understood as a brand) in 1952 as an idea of the engineer Colin Chapman, considered at the time one of the most revolutionary in the field of automotive engineering, author of several projects of advanced technology.
A detail about which little has been written is the origin of the logo and the name. The logo is presented on a yellow and green background with some stylized letters harmoniously intertwined, which are none other than the initials of its founder Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman.
Regarding the name of the team, Chapman himself was always in charge of prolonging and increasing the mystery. According to some accredited English sources, the word Lotus derives from the nickname of his wife, while others allude to Greek mythology, referring to the Lotophages mentioned in the Odyssey who, after being shipwrecked, reached the African coasts of present-day Libya. Legend has it that to forget their homeland they ate lotus flowers. What is the relationship between the word lotus, this legend and Lotus? Some people close to Chapman claim that many times the eccentric engineer referred to his cars by saying that whoever tried to drive one of them would immediately forget about all the others.
Some of the concepts that Chapman applied at the time -revolutionary- were later the basis for other colleagues of his who applied them in their single-seaters where the concept of "light, agile and fast" predominated over the rest. Up to that time, Formula cars were strong but heavy and structurally un-aerodynamic. Even developing lightweight single-seaters meant having less powerful engines and this meant a more than considerable saving of money, especially in the so-called "small" teams.
Just six years after its foundation, Lotus joined the "F1 circus", winning 79 grand prix and 7 world titles in its career, a record in little more than half a century of existence.
### Sporting glory, decline and disappearance.
Lotus under the name of Lotus Team debuted at the Monaco Grand Prix in 1958, but two more years were to pass before the first victories were achieved by Stirling Moss in Monte Carlo and Riverside in the state of California (USA). In that year Jim Clark arrived at Lotus and stayed for six years until he died in a Formula 2 accident in Hockenheim (Germany), by that time he had won two world titles in 1963 and 1965 and 25 victories. That same year Lotus won the championship with Graham Hill, although Colin Chapman felt the blow produced by the death of his favorite driver.
However, he was soon replaced by another rising star in the F1 firmament: the Austrian Jochen Rindt, who won the post-mortem world title after he had died at Monza in the Italian Grand Prix in an accident during Saturday's qualifying, when he was almost virtually the champion. The only one who could have snatched the title from him was the Belgian Jacky Ickx with Ferrari, but he had to win the last three races, but in the end he could only win two of them. The remaining one, the U.S. Grand Prix, was won with Lotus by a young and unknown talent until then: Emerson Fittpaldi.
The death of first Clark and then Rindt moved a great number of accusations towards the single-seaters built by Colin Chapman, accusing them not only of being too light but also, for this very reason, too fragile and dangerous for the safety of the drivers.
The new Lotus model began to be developed immediately, although it saw its first fruits in 1971 when Emerson Fittipaldi won the first of his world championships, to move to McLaren and win the second of his titles in 1974.
Lotus had to wait almost five years to have great joys again, this time with the Lotus 78 and the guidance of Ronnie Peterson who became the teammate of Mario Andretti, the Italian-American who managed to give Lotus the last great satisfaction of its sporting history in F1, winning the last title in both categories: Drivers and Constructors.
From then on, the decline began with ups and downs that saw drivers such as the Argentine Carlos Alberto Reutemann and Nigel Mansell.
The economic-financial crash of its oil sponsor - the main sponsor of the team - contributed to the team's vertiginous fall, to which was added the death by heart attack - at least so it was declared - of Colin Chapman. There are so many hypotheses about this that it is difficult to know which one is true. From those who claim that in his will he had declared an absolute private burial of his remains to those who claim that -accused of some crimes of fraud and others of a personal nature- he simulated his death. The total absence of images of his funeral and burial contributed to this at the time.
In 1995 David Hunt, who had bought Team Lotus two years earlier, announces that due to financial problems the team stops competing in Formula 1. Unkept promises to return to the highest category of motorsport are continuously succeeded until in 2011 Lotus reappears on the F1 grid.
This joy did not last long. In 2015 Renault announced the acquisition and merger of Lotus following negotiations with Genni Capital of Luxembourg origin. And thus the history of the Lotus name in F1 is definitively closed.
Gone are the times of glory and brilliance when the black and gold cars had become an F1 emblem with the trademark of a well-known tobacco company before the FIA banned this type of advertising.
There were several Formula 1 drivers who became famous handling Chapman's single-seaters. Jim Clark, Jochen Rindt who won the title post mortem -irony of destiny also Clark died competing in F1 with a Lotus-, Emerson Fittipaldi, Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell perhaps the most identified with Lotus of them all.
Chapman died of a heart attack in 1982 and from that moment on the decline of the team began.
The first season after the return to F1 had Kimi Räikkönen and Vitaly Petrov as drivers (the latter later replaced by Romain Grosjean). It ends the season in a more than worthy fourth place in the Constructors' World Championship and is considered the revelation of that year in F1. The future is promising and the hopes of reviving old laurels are high. In the Drivers' World Championship, the title is won by Sebastian Vettel with Red Bull, but Kimi Räikkönen with Lotus is placed third behind Fernando Alonso and ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
The following season the team is considered to be in the development stage but financial problems begin to arise. Lotus retained fourth place in the Constructors' World Championship behind Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, while in the Drivers' Championship Kimi Räikkönen finished in fifth place, ahead of the Red Bull pairing (Vettel-Weber), Alonso with Ferrari and Hamilton with Mercedes.
In 2014, the debacle begins. Räikkönen (the only driver to have won two grand prix for Lotus in this new era) leaves and Pastor Maldonado takes his place, and after an acceptable start, the team and its drivers start to fall further and further away from the points. Lotus drops back to eighth position in the Constructors' World Championship and Grosjean, the best-placed of its drivers, finishes 14th.
The 2015 season marks the beginning of the end despite improving its performance compared to the previous season, which allows Lotus to close the season with a sixth place in the Constructors' World Championship and Grosjean in the Drivers' World Championship finishes in 11th place, beginning the Mercedes-Hamilton domination. Renault buys the team, which will once again compete under the name Renault F1 Team. Lotus disappears definitively as a brand from the Formula 1 scene.
Kimi Raikkonen with the Lotus E20 at the Francorchamps circuit at the Belgian Grand Prix in 2012.
Source images: Formula1.
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