CevertF1 wrote:
Well he was always for making them as light and fragile as possible to gain more speed.
I'm not for one second saying Chapman wanted to harm his drivers but their safety didn't seem to be very high on his list imo. As you can tell by the letter poor Jochen wrote a few months before his death.
+2 i just did some research after some chatting with a fellow board member.
Chapman's notebook from 1975, recently on display at the Frankfurt Motor Show, sheds light on a man for whom failure was simply not an option. With a chilling brevity Chapman notes, "A racing car has only one objective: to win motor races. If it does not, it is nothing but a waste of time and money. It does not matter how safe it is, if it does not consistently win it is nothing."
These words were written only a few years after Chapman's great friend and champion driver Jim Clark died [ in a lotus F2 car] due to what many think was a technical fault with his car. Clark's successor, Jochen Rindt, wrote to Chapman saying his Lotus would still be competitive if a few pounds were added to make it stronger. This plea wasn't heeded and, soon after, Rindt shared Clark's tragic fate.
more out of his notebook
"what do we have to do to make it win?
with absolutely no compromise;
as for how expensive it is, how simple, how safe, & how easy to maintain - NONE of these aspects must detract one iota from winning.
“Good enough” is just NOT good enough to win and keep winning"
Jochen rindt wrote the following letter to Colin before his death:
"Honestly your cars are so quick that we would still be competitive with a few extra pounds used to make the weakest parts stronger […] I can only drive a car in which I have some confidence, and I feel the point of no confidence is quite near."
Keith Botsford once made a decent statement on Colin's builduing 'language' :
“Any damn fool can build a bridge that won’t fall down. But it takes a man of much greater skill, to build a bridge that JUST won’t fall down”
emphasis on just.
there is a story back in long Beach '81, two journalists walking through the pitlane, one of them puytting his thumb on the nose of a Lotus, push gently but the bodywork inmediately showed where the man had put his thumb down.
Then there's Rindt who volunteerded to loose two kg's if the front axles of the 72 were strengthened for it in return.
Stewarts comments that he would feel less uncertain about a Lotus if it wasn't built by Chapman too but only designed by him.....
