Lotus 56 56B Race Cars

Constructor:	Lotus
Class:	Race Car
Years:	1968 to 1969

The Lotus 56 was a four-wheel-drive gas turbine racing car, which was developed built in 1968 by the British motorsport team Lotus.

History

The Lotus 56 was developed in 1968 to the Lotus 38 to replace, with Jim Clark in 1965, the 500-mile race at Indianapolis had won. Chief designer Maurice Philippe created an innovative extreme wedge- shaped racing car powered by a Pratt & Whitney ST6 gas turbine. So that the thrust of the gas turbine could be brought to the ground, the 56 also received a four-wheel drive. 
 In 1967, Andy Granatelli of the STP Corporation ran a gas-turbine-powered four-wheel drive car at Indy and very nearly won the race. For the following year he hired Lotus to build a team of turbo-cars, and the dramatic wedge-shaped four-wheel-drive Type 56 was the result.

The cars did not have a lot of power, but they handled supremely well. They were heading for an historic success when, with only nine laps of the 200 remaining both Art Pollard and leader Joe Leonard were side-lined by fuel-pump failure. Graham Hill's car had lost a wheel.
For 1969 the American track establishment reacted by effectively banning turbine power and eventually four-wheel drive, while spin-offs from the Lotus 56 programme included a flurry of unsuccessful four-wheel-drive Grand Prix cars and in 1971 an uncompetitive Type 56B gas-turbine Formula 1 car.

The first test drives with Jim Clark at the wheel were successful, but Clark crashed in the spring of 1968 with the Lotus 48 in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim deadly. Substitute Mike Spence crashed in qualifying for the 500-mile race with the 56 deadly. He lost control of the car, hit heavily into the concrete wall of the track boundary and was then hit by his right front wheel on the helmet. A few hours later he succumbed to his severe head injuries at the hospital. Lotus Graham Hill, Joe Leonard and Art Pollard reported for the race.

In training, the turbine was driven only with 80% of the possible power. The pilots had to brake hard in front of the corners so that the turbine could rewind to full power when the pedal was released. Through this process, the full turbine power could be called up on the straight and the delayed response of the turbine could thus be prevented. Joe Leonard put his 56 with a cut of 274.49 km / h his 56 promptly on the pole position, In the race had to be dispensed with this trick, because the braking in front of the curves had led to unrhythmic driving and the discs would not have held this for 200 laps. Before the race but was loud criticism of the turbine cars loud. Aircraft engines should not displace the conventional piston engines. The officials therefore insisted that the three Lotus had to start with normal premium gasoline and not be allowed to fall back on the special aviation fuel. The reduced power and the deceleration of the turbine in heavy traffic slowed the three Lotus sustainable. Although Joe Leonard briefly took the lead, but all three vehicles failed with defects. Leonard was rated as twelfth and Pollard as 13th of the United States Automobile Club banned both turbines and four-wheel drive in 1969 and the Lotus 56 was no longer developed.

Colin Chapman took the four-wheel drive technology into the Lotus 63 and had the Indy replacement car converted for Formula One. The car was used in 1971 in some races. Emerson Fittipaldi drove the car at the Race of Champions at Brands Hatch. In training Fittipaldi rode in the rain superior time. In the race, this time on a dry track, the Brazilian did not get beyond a midfield spot. The second Lotus factory driver Dave Walker drove the car at the Grand Prix of the Netherlands in Zandvoort, Walker had already moved from tenth place on 22nd when he had to leave the track and give up. Fittipaldi drove the 56 still at the Italian Grand Prix, where he finished eighth, and at a Formula 5000 race at Hockenheim, which he finished second behind Frank Gardner. Then Chapman gave up the work on the all-wheel drive and the gas turbine finally and focused on the development of the Lotus 72.

Lotus 56B

Although it had originally been intended to race a Formula One gas turbine car in 1969, the 56B, developed from the 1968 Indianapolis cars, was not raced until 1971. The wedge-shape, four-wheel-drive and the double wish-bone suspension with the coil spring damper units mounted inboard were developed from the 1968 car, but the engine was extensively modified. This was a Pratt & Whitney unit built in Canada and to comply with the FIA equivalency formula one of the axial compressor stages was eliminated and the area of the high-pressure nozzle was reduced. The car had a fuel capacity of 62 gallons contained in side tanks.

The car ran in a number of non-Championship Formula One races during the year; it was driven Prix (he crashed) and by Fittipaldi in the Italian Grand Prix (he finished
wedge-shaped bodywork that appeared eighth). In addition, Fittipaldi drove at the Daily Express Trophy race. It the car into second place in the Preis was an experimental car and entered der Nationen (a Formula 5000 race) at Hockenheim.