Famous Lotus Drivers: Clark, Hill, Rindt, Fittipaldi, Andretti, Senna
The world champions and near-champions who drove for Colin Chapman's team, and what each of them did in a Lotus.
Team Lotus won six drivers’ world championships and seven constructors’ titles between 1963 and 1978. These are the people who did the driving.
Stirling Moss
Moss never drove for the works team, but he gave Lotus its first Grand Prix victory, at Monaco in 1960, in a Lotus 18 entered by the privateer Rob Walker. He won at Monaco again in 1961 in an underpowered Lotus against the Ferraris, a drive often ranked among the greatest of all.
Jim Clark
The driver most closely identified with Lotus, and with Colin Chapman personally. Clark, a farmer from the Scottish Borders, drove for no other Formula 1 team. He won the world championship in 1963 and 1965 in the Lotus 25 and 33, and in 1965 he also won the Indianapolis 500 in the Lotus 38, the first victory there for a rear-engined car.
He took 25 Grand Prix wins from 72 starts and was famously gentle on his machinery. He was killed in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim in April 1968. Chapman never fully recovered from it.
Graham Hill
Hill started his Formula 1 career with Lotus in 1958 and returned in 1967 as Clark’s team-mate. After Clark’s death he held the team together and won the 1968 championship in the Lotus 49. He remains the only driver to have won the Monaco Grand Prix, the Indianapolis 500 and the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Jochen Rindt
The Austrian was blindingly fast and openly worried about the fragility of Chapman’s cars. In 1970 he won five races in the new Lotus 72 before he was killed in practice at Monza. Nobody overhauled his points total, and he became the sport’s only posthumous world champion.
Emerson Fittipaldi
Fittipaldi won his fourth Grand Prix start, at Watkins Glen in 1970, a result that secured Rindt’s title. In 1972, in the black and gold Lotus 72, he became world champion at 25, the youngest there had been at that time.
Ronnie Peterson
The Swede was regarded as the fastest driver of the mid-1970s and the most spectacular to watch. He won nine of his ten Grands Prix in a Lotus and finished second in the 1978 championship, supporting his team-mate. He died after a start-line accident at Monza that year.
Mario Andretti
Andretti took pole on his Formula 1 debut in a Lotus in 1968. He came back in 1976 and helped develop the ground-effect cars, the Lotus 78 and 79, working closely with Chapman. In 1978 he won six races and the championship, the last drivers’ title for Team Lotus.
Nigel Mansell
Mansell was brought into the team by Chapman as a test driver and made his Grand Prix debut for Lotus in 1980. He did not win in a Lotus, but he always credited Chapman with giving him his chance. He became world champion with Williams in 1992.
Ayrton Senna
Senna joined Lotus in 1985 and won his first Grand Prix in his second race for the team, in torrential rain at Estoril. In three seasons he took six wins and sixteen pole positions in the black and gold, and later yellow, turbocharged cars. His victory at Detroit in 1987 was the last for the original Team Lotus.
Mika Häkkinen
The future double world champion made his Formula 1 debut with Lotus in 1991 and stayed for two seasons, scoring points in an uncompetitive car before moving to McLaren.
Kimi Räikkönen
The Lotus name returned to Grand Prix racing in 2010 through licensing deals. The Enstone-based Lotus F1 Team, a different organisation from Chapman’s, gave Räikkönen two wins, at Abu Dhabi in 2012 and Melbourne in 2013.
Away from Formula 1
Lotus sports cars have their own roll of honour. The Elan and the Lotus Cortina, the latter often on three wheels with Jim Clark at the wheel, dominated saloon and sports car racing in the 1960s. In modern times, Exiges and Evoras have won GT4 titles and class victories in endurance racing, and Exiges have been regular front-runners on tarmac rallies such as Targa Tasmania.
The team behind them
No account of Lotus drivers is complete without the engineers: Len Terry, Maurice Philippe, Tony Rudd, Peter Wright, who originated ground effect, and Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin of Cosworth, both former Lotus men. For the wider story, see our history of Lotus.