Video: Lotus 49 vs Corvette ZR1 at COTA
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Here’s a cool couple of videos from America’s Road and Track magazine showing how an old F1 car compares to a modern sportscar. They compared a Lotus 49 from 1967 with the current Corvette ZR1:
Aaah, so now we know what Rossi was doing at COTA driving a Lotus. :)
The first video isn’t really worth watching, unless you care to listen to a patriotic sales pitch on the Corvette and an American making a big deal of pointing out the Lotus 49 had an Ford Cosworth DFV engine.
On point though, I was really surprised to hear that the Lotus actually exerted it’s advantage under acceleration and not through the corners and under braking. I was expecting that despite the fact it lacks the modern tyres, suspension, electronics and brakes of the Corvette that the much lower weight would more than offset it’s handicaps, only for the advantage to be clawed back on the straights by the bigger engined Corvette!
One other thing I noticed though was how this video illustrates just how far F1 cars have progressed in over 40 years: the braking distances are far smaller now; a modern F1 car can carry so much more speed through the essess, showing up the aerodynamic advantage they hold; turn 10 is a flat-out kink in a modern F1 car, but in the Lotus Rossi had to visibly lift off and what I thought was the most telling aspect how much understeer the Lotus suffered through turn 17 – it got nowhere near the apex!
Here is a video of Vettel’s pole lap last year at the same circuit: if you watch it after the on-board of the Lotus that @andae23 has kindly posted the differences become highly apparent:
http://youtube.com/#/watch?v=Nto9z-U8vM0I think the Lotus 49 can go wááááy faster than that. Just compare Rossi’s onboard to the footage below, which is shot from Jackie Stewart’s BRM following Clark’s Lotus 49 (was the best I could find):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AiHekdM3A0
I think Clark could have gone at the very least 15 seconds faster than Rossi.
Very possible – I guess that since it’s a piece of history they have to protect it! If we were to re-incarnate a full-paced qualifying session then indeed I think we’d be seeing profoundly quicker laptimes from the Lotus, still though I do find it interesting comparing it and the RB8 @andae23!
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