Without a doubt, Colin Chapman is a legend in F1 circles. The founder of Lotus cars and the Lotus Formula One Team has been credited with many of the technological advances seen in F1 today.
Born in London in 1928, Colin Chapman studied structural engineering at University College London before joining the RAF.
His involvement with aircraft no doubt taught him many lessons that would prove useful when he moved into the automotive industry. Not least of which was that light weight and strength were essential for performance.
The First Lotus
Chapman's first car design (the Mk1) was completed in 1948 and was called a Lotus. Where Chapman got the name from is not known. However, one of the more interesting theories is that he purchased a car from an auction to use in his car company. The car had not sold and had a label on it with the abbreviation Lot US, or lot unsold.
A number of street-going sports cars followed the Mk1, but it was the Mk 7 or Lotus seven that really established Lotus and Chapman as producers of vehicles capable of winning races.
The Lotus seven was a front-engined sports car that was acknowledged as one of the best handling cars made. Although the car used a relatively small engine, the light weight and superb handling ensured race track success.
Chapman's Design Innovations
Chapman is credited with many design innovations, including rear suspension units known as Chapman Struts and monocoque chassis. But he will probably be best remembered for his pioneering work on aerodynamics, and in particular ground effects on race cars.
In the early days of F1, a number of teams experimented with wings on the rear of the car to produce down-force. These wings were simply inverted aircraft wings; it seemed that the same force that gave an aircraft lift would give F1 cars down-force. However, after many structural failures the FIA were forced to regulate these new devices.
The first major regulation affecting the use of wings was that they must be mounted to the body work and not to any part of the suspension.
With the wings no longer as effective in applying down-force to the correct place (i.e. the up-rights or axle assembly), engineers like Chapman decided to look at other parts of the car to find different ways of generating down-force.
Under Body Aero Down-force
Chapman's background with aircraft played a huge part in his design philosophies, but his race car designs were pioneering in many ways. His biggest discovery was that of the affects of aerodynamics when in close proximity to the ground.
Chapman and his Lotus team were the first to use underbody tunnels, or venturis, as a means of creating down-force. The idea behind these tunnels was to create negative pressure below the car, which, with higher pressure above, forced the car down.
Although these tunnels produced considerable amounts of down-force (with little extra drag), Chapman's biggest development was to add side fences or skirts to the tunnels. It is rumored that during wind tunnel tests, engineers for Lotus found that the car was visibly sucked down when the car's effective speed was increased.
The Chapman Legacy
The look and capabilities of current F1 race cars owe much to the design talents of Colin Chapman and his Lotus race team. The company no longer produces Formula 1 cars, but it is still a leader in design innovations and high performance cars.
There is no doubt that Colin Chapman would have been proud to see that the first road car to be produced with a chassis held together with only glue (the Lotus Elise) was produced by his company, Lotus Cars Ltd
