Competition car Unregsitered

Chassis no. 4

- Second in the 1984 Detroit Grand Prix with De Angelis

- Chassis that enabled De Angelis to secure third place in the championship

- High-performance car designed by Gerard Ducarouge

- Remarkable condition

Propelled by Renault turbo power, the Lotus 95T marked the beginning of a mid-1980s revival for one of Formula 1’s ‘grandee’ teams. The car, running in the famous black and gold livery of longtime Lotus sponsor John Player Special, didn’t quite manage to record a victory in the 1984 season. But in the hands of Nigel Mansell and especially Elio de Angelis the 95T proved a consistent frontrunner that claimed third place in the constructors’ standings – Team Lotus’s best finish since its 1978 championship year.

 

De Angelis achieved four podium finishes on his way to third in the drivers’ standings, behind dominant McLaren-TAG duo Niki Lauda and Alain Prost. Meanwhile, Mansell added two more – third places at the French and Dutch GPs – on his way to 10th, equal on points with Toleman’s rookie Ayrton Senna.

 

Two years after the death of founder Colin Chapman, who died aged just 54 of a heart attack in December 1982, Team Lotus was still in recovery mode under the management of Peter Warr. Winless since de Angelis had narrowly defeated Keke Rosberg’s Williams in the 1982 Austrian GP, Lotus was finally building a new head of steam after securing a supply of Renault turbo engines in 1983.

 

Designed by French design veteran Gérard Ducarouge, the 95T was a more considered successor to his first Lotus. Ducarouge had joined the team mid-1983 after his dismissal from Alfa Romeo and designed the 94T in the space of just five weeks.

 

The new car for 1984 was devised around a Kevlar/carbon-fibre monocoque with pull-rod suspension all round. The bodywork resembled the 94T with shorter sidepods and a variety of circuit-specific aerodynamic packages were made available. Considered as among the best-handling F1 cars of the 1984 season, the team was hampered by a comparative lack of power from the Renault compared to TAG-Porsche and BMW rivals. Both KKK and larger Garrett turbochargers were used, while Lotus developed a new gearbox with Hewland-made internals when the previous units proved unreliable.

 

A new fuel restriction of 220 litres per race and a ban on mid-race refuelling placed a greater emphasis on tyre stops and strategy that season. On this point, Lotus scrapped its 1983 agreement to run Pirellis and switched back to a Goodyear supply, the American brand having developed its own radial rubber over the winter. The tyres wouldn’t prove a match for the Michelins run by McLaren, but still de Angelis impressed across the season, qualifying a dozen times in the top five, racing consistently and generally out-performing his British team-mate.

 

The season started well. De Angelis set the pace in Rio testing, then Lotus dominated practice at the Brazilian GP, Mansell proving quickest on Friday and de Angelis claiming pole position the following day. He finished third in the race after a poor start and then having to manage a down-on-power engine, while Mansell crashed out during his defence of fourth position.

 

Poor reliability thwarted the team’s ambitions in South Africa, where Mansell started third and de Angelis ran as high as second before a throttle linkage problem set in. But from the Belgian GP at Zolder, de Angelis began a run of eight consecutive points finishes that for a while maintained his slim hope of challenging the McLaren drivers for the world title. He finished second in Detroit and scored a pair of thirds at Imola – despite running out of fuel – and in Dallas.

 

Mansell’s fortunes were mixed. In Monaco, he looked on course for his first F1 victory having taken the lead of a grand prix for the first time from second on the grid. Building a gap to Prost’s McLaren, he lost control through Massenet on the approach to Casino Square and crashed, blaming a slippery white line on the road in the wet conditions.

 

In Detroit, Mansell was fined $6000 and blamed for the start-line accident that stopped the race. In Dallas, he claimed his first F1 pole position with de Angelis making it an all-Lotus front row and led the opening 35 laps before succumbing to pressure from Keke Rosberg as his tyres degraded. Mansell’s gearbox then failed on the last lap, triggering a dramatic scene as he pushed the car over the finish line to claim sixth, then collapsed through heat exhaustion.

 

The de Angelis points run came to a bitter end in Germany, where he qualified second and led the early stages until his engine failed. Mansell finished fourth at Hockenheim having started down in 16th.

 

Both Lotus 95Ts suffered blown engines in Austria, but the black cars finished third and fourth behind the dominant McLarens at Zandvoort, Mansell ahead of de Angelis. Further retirements followed in Italy and at the Nürburgring, before a fifth place at the Estoril finale made certain that de Angelis finished third in the drivers’ championship.

 

This car, chassis no 4, was the fourth and last 95T built. Despite now carrying the #12 (Mansell’s race number), it served mainly as the spare car for Elio de Angelis (#11) through the 1984 season.

 

De Angelis raced the car three times. In Montréal, he switched to chassis 4 on the morning of the race following engine problems on both his own car and Mansell’s, which required its second engine change of the weekend before the start. Having qualified a fine third, de Angelis lost two places to the Ferraris of Michele Alboreto and René Arnoux on the opening lap, then found his Renault turbo engine was losing power. While Alboreto retired and Arnoux pitted for new tyres, the Lotus was passed by Niki Lauda’s McLaren and then Mansell after the team-mates engaged in a spirited battle. But the loss of second gear hampered Mansell and de Angelis, despite an excursion across the grass, nursed chassis 4 home in fourth, with his team-mate salvaging a point in sixth.

 

A week later in Detroit, de Angelis again raced chassis 4 where he was eventually classified second to Nelson Piquet’s dominant Brabham. In ‘Motown’, Mansell had the upper hand and qualified third – only to cause controversy by colliding with both Alain Prost and Piquet off the start, triggering an accident that stopped the race.

 

After the restart, Mansell passed Prost and shadowed Piquet, who had switched to his spare Brabham – until the Lotus lost second gear and was forced out. Likewise, de Angelis would endure a similar problem in chassis 4. Starting fifth on the grid, he moved up the order in a race marked by a high retirement rate – only six cars made the finish. De Angelis ran as high as second, also lost second gear and dropped behind rookie Martin Brundle to finish third on the road. But when Tyrrell was disqualified from the whole season later in the year over a ballast controversy, Brundle was stripped of his second place in Detroit and de Angelis found himself promoted.

 

Chassis 4 returned to race action in de Angelis’s hands for the Portuguese GP season finale at Estoril in October, when the Italian finished fifth and secured his third place in the 1984 F1 drivers’ world championship. He and Mansell had qualified on the third row of the grid, and it was the British driver who starred in what was his final drive for Lotus. He ran second to Prost’s McLaren, only for a brake problem late in the race to pitch him into a spin and retirement. Meanwhile, de Angelis had switched to chassis 4 after a front suspension pick-up point was ripped out of the monocoque of his race car on Saturday morning, in a clash with Philippe Streiff’s Renault. Running sixth in the opening stages of the race, de Angelis suffered a loss of engine power and had to be content with his fifth place at the finish. It at least meant that chassis 4 had scored points in all three of its race appearances in 1984 and enabled De Angelis to secure third place in the World Championship at the last Grand Prix of the season.

 

This exceptional car joined the collection in the late 1990s. Following a visit to the collection with Gerard Crombac, the dynamic Clive Chapman proposed a deal to Renault. Wishing to run a 95T and a 97T ex-Senna under the supervision of his Classic Team Lotus entity, he traded the 95T-4 for several engines that enabled him to get several single-seaters from the team founded by his father back on the track. The car has since been carefully preserved and is a wonderful restoration project.