Team Lotus

Team Lotus closed at the end of 1994, bankrupt. The name has since been licensed to unrelated entries — Lotus Racing in 2010 and the Enstone team from 2012 to 2015 — but Colin Chapman's constructor ended there.

Colin Chapman's Lotus was the most inventive team in the sport's history and, for a period, the most dangerous to drive for. Chapman's design principle was to add lightness, and he pursued it past the point of structural prudence.

The innovations arrived in a steady sequence: the Lotus 25 brought the fully stressed monocoque chassis to Formula One in 1962; the Lotus 49 made the engine a structural member; the Lotus 72 moved radiators to the sidepods and introduced the wedge shape; the Lotus 78 and 79 discovered ground effect and made everything else on the grid obsolete overnight. Lotus also introduced commercial sponsorship liveries to the sport in 1968.

Six drivers won championships in Lotus cars. Jim Clark took two before his death at Hockenheim in 1968. Jochen Rindt's 1970 title was awarded posthumously, the only time that has happened. Chapman died of a heart attack in 1982 and the team declined steadily without him.