Jim Clark's Lotus 49 at COTA (in-car)

KevinWI

KevinWI

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A Thanksgiving miracle! Great video. Alexander Rossi takes a vintage Lotus 49 driven by Jimmy Clark for a lap around COTA. The car is priceless so he really is gentle with it in the turns, but the thing sounds awesome and throaty in the straights.



Can't believe how small the car is. You can definitely tell why multiple drivers dying during a season was regular in those days.
 
Zerkfitting said:
he was sawing the wheel at times. Stick shift - you don't see that in open wheel cars anymore.
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Yeah they say those cars were like driving on ice so they must be a handful.

The stick shift is so cool to see. I understand why they have the sequential transmission with the paddle shifters on the wheel now but there's something classic and timeless about the stick shift in an open-wheeler.
 
Cool video, thanks for sharing! Rossi really put her through her paces, riding over the corner rumble strips, and getting loose a few times. What a beautiful sound! He had the tires crying on a few turns after he got his nerve up. I can't seem to find the lap times, but you can tell he got a little braver with each lap.

IndyCars had sequential side mountend stickshifts until very recently, they were a few years behind F1 on paddle shifters.

Dario drove Clark's Indy 500 winning Lotus at my favorite track, although much more 'respectfully'. Check out the left side offset, from using longer right-side suspension control arms for oval track setup.

Watch full screen if you can:
 
Great stuff. Comparisons are unfair, but the past generation set a standard that the current f1 cars cant match (but thankfully safer now).

The video is a thing of beauty.
 
They can fly too.

stewart-hill-owen-photo-2-1.jpg
 
KevinWI said:
Yeah they say those cars were like driving on ice so they must be a handful.
Click to expand...

It sure looked like a handful... I stopped counting how many times he had opposite lock to get it around the track. I can't imagine how hard that would be to drive on the edge and actually pass someone. Add to that the higher chance of dying in a crash and you really have to respect those guys that drove in that era.

It looks like he was turning ~2:20 lap times, which is about as fast as a decent sorted street car (like an M3) today.
 
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