How a mistake helped create a Lotus F1 icon

Today is the anniversary of the car’s first appearance at the 1978 Belgian GP, a race it duly won and whose appearance prompted a development war in F1 as rivals realised they too needed to follow its ground effect concept.
However, the Lotus 79 was not the team’s first foray into ‘ground effect’, but rather a refinement of a solution it had introduced a year earlier with the 78.
A happy …Keep reading