Lotus 49

This is one of the cars I photographed at the Donington Park Museum on a visit in March 1996.

It's a 1968 Lotus 49 which has a 2,998cc Ford Cosworth DFV engine. The Lotus 49 was introduced in 1967, and despite reliability problems Jim Clark managed four wins to finish second in that year's World Drivers' Championship, although Graham Hill only managed to finish in two of the Grands Prix that season. Jim Clark won the first race of the 1968 Championship in South Africa and Graham Hill finished the race in second place. This was the last race for Lotus with their traditional green livery with a yellow stripe as the following race in Spain was the first appearance of the car with its new John Player's Gold Leaf livery - as seen in the above photograph. Graham Hill was now team leader as Jim Clark had died in an accident in a Formula 2 race at Hockenheim, and he won the Spanish Grand Prix and two other races to end the season as World Champion, Lotus winning the Constructors' Championship. 1969 was not such a successful season, the team only managing to win two races, one each for Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt, and Jochen Rindt only won one race in the car in the 1970 season before it was replaced by the Lotus 72. The car at Donington Park was chassis R12, a car built for Ford for promotional purposes, but was never raced in period as a new Lotus 49B had been produced before the car was released by Ford.