Lotus 80 hits the track!!
On Monday the 8th of June Manfredo Rossi Di Montelera's Lotus 80 gets its first run in 2 years with its newly manufactured gearbox.
The Lotus 80 has not seen a track since it was retired towards the end of the 2013 season, having been plagued with mechanical failures. The Lotus 79 and 80 had a unique wheel bearing design in order to keep the assembly compact. Whilst this worked in 1980 when Lotus were working closely with a bearing manufacturer, in 2012 we had numerous bearing failures resulting in us exhausting all the spares held by Classic Team Lotus. This left no option but to commission the design and manufactured of new front and rear upright/wheel bearing assemblies using currently available bearings. These new uprights were not initially successful resulting in repeated bearing failures.
Over the last few months the team have spent many hours addressing the causes of failure.
We had a successful shake down and test at Blyton Park in Lincolnshire (before the rain set in) ahead of its debut 2015 race at the Coppa Intereuropa in Monza on June 19-21st.