On this week #51: Colin Chapman
Anthony Colin Bruce Chapman died in Norwich on 16 December 1982. He was one of the most influential and charismatic people to have set foot in a Formula 1 paddock, not to mention a person of great importance in the car industry.
He was born on 19 May 1928 in Richmond upon Thames, a borough to the south west of London, to a family that ran a public house. Young Colin loved anything mechanical, especially cars which, from his teenage years, he would dismantle and reassemble. He graduated in mechanical engineering from University College London in 1948, after which he joined the RAF (Royal Air Force) for a short time, never losing his interest in all things four-wheeled. At the start of the Fifties, with help from his young wife Hazel, he built his first car, reworking an Austin Seven. Thus was born the Lotus Mark I, crude and spartan but above all, very light and in fact lightness would be the leitmotif of Chapman's work throughout his career as a car designer. The origins of the Lotus name have never been clearly defined: some say it was very likely a pet name for his wife, while in a documentary about his life, Chapman claims he simply saw the word on a bathroom tap.
Off the back of the Mark I's success in amateur races in England, in 1952 Colin established the Lotus Engineering Company. He had a clear vision to design cars that would not win based on power alone, but would do so through efficiency, precision and light weight
Around this time, Chapman was racing himself, even making his Formula 1 debut in the 1956 French Grand Prix in a Vanwall, after the English manufacturer had entrusted him with the task of redesigning its car's chassis and bodywork. Chapman was a brilliant fifth in qualifying, but was unable to race as the car sustained damage when he went off the track. Chapman's advice proved invaluable to Vanwall which won the very first Constructors' Cup in 1958, the forerunner to the current championship title. Growing success as a car manufacturer went hand in hand with the development of racing cars, leading to Lotus making its Formula 1 debut in 1958, immediately claiming a sixth place finish in the Monaco Grand Prix courtesy of Cliff Allison.
In 1962, Chapman produced his first masterpiece, the Lotus 25, the first Formula 1 car to use a monocoque chassis. Instead of a conventional tubular chassis, Chapman came up with a load bearing structure that was stiffer, safer and above all, incredibly light. It was revolutionary, as if the low, compact and efficient Lotus 25 had landed from another planet. And in Jim Clark, it had found its perfect match. The Scotsman was a pure talent and together with Chapman they were an almost mystical pairing, winning the championship in 1963 and again in 1965. Lotus was no longer just another racing team, it was the embodiment of ingenuity up against brute force. Because, while other engineers continued to chase horsepower, Chapman realised that the future lay in the air and that aerodynamics would become the key factor in improving the performance of racing cars.
In the Seventies, the Lotus 72 shook things up still further with its innovative design. The radiators were moved to the side while the car was wedge shaped to optimise airflow and it took Jochen Rindt to the 1970 title. There was yet more to come and in 1977, Chapman introduced the concept of ground effect with the Lotus 78. Featuring a sculpted underfloor and side skirts, the car was capable of generating huge amounts of downforce without increasing aero drag, using what is known as the Venturi effect, the result being that the car seemed glued to the track. In 1979, the technology was perfected still further. With Mario Andretti at the wheel, it dominated the field and the American was crowned champion, giving Lotus its very last world titles. “It's like the car's on rails,” said Andretti. The world could only look on in wonder at Chapman's latest magic trick.
His genius was not simply confined to technical innovation. Chapman introduced to Formula 1 a new way of doing business, bringing in sponsors with no real links to racing or cars and with them new and exciting liveries in a breakaway from the tradition of running national colours. As from the 1968 Spanish Grand Prix, the Lotus 49B shed its traditional British Racing Green, replacing it with the colours of Gold Leaf cigarettes, an Imperial Tobacco brand. Then in the 1970s it switched to the famous John Player Special black, trimmed with gold.
Chapman's time in Formula 1 was also marked by several tragedies. Three of his drivers lost their lives in cars bearing the name of his company: Clark in 1968 in a Formula 2 race in Hockenheim, Rindt in free practice for the 1970 Italian Grand Prix and Ronnie Peterson, again in Monza in 1978. Cruel losses which affected him profoundly. Charismatic and brilliant, but also irascible and obsessed with winning, he had a visceral relationship with his drivers, regarding them as extensions of his car, men who were capable of pushing themselves beyond fear and fatigue to transform his ideas into wins. However, he was also aware that every innovation came with its risks and he found every defeat hard to swallow.
Colin Chapman died suddenly of a heart attack on 16 December 1982, at the age of 54. But there was a mystery and myth that grew around his passing. Chapman was actually heavily involved with the Romanian-American entrepreneur John DeLorean, with whom he had joined forces to help develop the DMC DeLorean road car with funding from the British government. When the project collapsed in 1982, Delorean was charged by the US government with cocaine trafficking and DMC went bankrupt. It later emerged that ten million pounds of British taxpayer's money invested in the company had disappeared. It was eventually tracked to Swiss bank accounts controlled by Chapman, DeLorean and Lotus accountant Fred Bushell, who then served three years in prison. The FBI even searched for Chapman in Brazil, based on speculation that he was living there, having had plastic surgery, while his share of the money had been moved to a Panamanian account. However, the FBI eventually and definitively closed the case in the early Nineties.
His passing left a deep void, not just at Lotus but in the world of motorsport. Chapman was not just an engineer and designer, he was an artist of ingenuity, able to visualise speed like no other. His inventions – the monocoque chassis, ground effect, innovative suspension – changed Formula 1 forever, laying the foundations for what it has become today.
