Putting BANNED in capitals. Am I a KZfaq now? Oh bugger I missed the red arrow pointing at a thing and a shitty reaction face.

Remember when I was a kid asking my dad how the 88 worked, and he said "Imagine a car wearing the body of a bigger car as a jacket." I didn't get what he meant.

it always made me kinda smile a bit when Chapman rolled out the 88 and everyone was like "What's he done this... no no no, not again, don't you dare, you've already reinvented these things 3 times you're not having 4!"

It took me years as a teenager to understand how this car worked in principle. Now every time I hear about flexibel aero parts I just think: " Yeah, but Lotus had the whole car flexing."

The “sprung part of the car” is basically everything apart from the suspension arms, wishbones, wheels, tires, brake assembly etc. The things that influence the springs and dampers rather than being influenced by them

Colin Chapman is legit legend...

Yes, I've held a random aero part once before. Was at Silverstone for endurance racing (probably FIA or early WEC possibly I'm unsure of year) and Lola had a truck there as some of the LMP cars had Lola bodies. This was back when it was still an open paddock at what is now WEC so you could mill around drinking beer watching the teams scramble around whilst you try not get run over by the endless stream of golf carts and quadbikes. Awesome stuff. Anyway ended up wandering over to the Lola truck and the lads over there were lovely and more than happy to talk about their jobs and Lola etc. Got a couple of free bits of Lola merch too and also got to hold some bit of diffuser or rear wing I can't remember, but it was a very cool experience! Race weekends with open paddocks are so fun.

Loving the Bell names at the end of the videos. That needs to be kept up

Man, it's a shame the sport didn't carry on being that weird. The 70's was such a mad era of chunky airboxes, six wheels, fan cars and ground effect. Nowadays we get excited if one of the cars has a slightly thinner nose.

There's the dirt late model squatters of the 2000s where one side would squat and the other side would be way up in the air. There was also the Sideways Sam #77 of Sam Hornish Jr. in the NASCAR All-Star Race which was all kinds of side force where the car's suspension was being toyed around with to make the car constantly look like it was turning even when the bodywork was perfectly straight with the Car of Tomorrow which was the mechanical aspect of skew taken to the point hitting the wall only made his car faster.

Balestre would make a great storytime episode.

I think the best description of this car and its legality I've ever seen went along these lines: The car was not revolutionary, nor did it really have 2 chassis. The independant "chassis" is just an oversized moving skirt, moving ground effect skirts being already banned, which lotus tried shoving past the rulebook by having it go over the top of the car and calling it a chassis. Further, other teams weren't the only ones complaining. Lotus drivers were. As fast as the car was, it was violently unpredictable and extremely unsafe even for its time. As much as I love lotus and its many advancements and contributions to motorsport, I have to agree with this. It's really blatantly a moving aerodynamic device, not even exploiting a real loophole like the Brabham fan car, they just used a different word to describe a banned component. It's like if I told an officer after pulling me over I wasn't speeding, rather simply expediting my arrival.

I'm so glad you did this episode. This idea back in the time was mind-breaking. I wish it was legal.

Aidan "what were you smoking?" Chapman "It was some stuff John Delorean gave me!". I have the EBBRO 1/20 kit of this car, truly fascinating design in my opinion and I am a 30+ year aerospace engineer. if i ever find another one I will send it to you.

I loved that line of "The car is not a crook", made me giggle. As for carbon fibre, most RC racing chassis' are made from it these days, have been for years, not exactly the same I know but just thought I'd mention it. Excellent video as always👍

I've held many things of CFRP, it gets less weird over time. things like rotor and propeller blades are light but proportional to their volume, because they have centimeters thick laminate and stand up to 7000g, while chopping chickens in half. Ducting however is made with 3 or so plies, it is as thin as possible while keeping air in. if you move them about, you feel resistance more from aero drag than weight, and you tend to grip them overly tight. Same thing with balsa some types of foam.

Team Lotus prototyped the twin chassis arrangement with the Type 86 before they produced the Type 88. Only one Type 86 chassis was built I believe and was never raced. The Type 86 is in the collection at Classic Team Lotus, Hethel. I saw it there when I visited in 2021.

"Entirely sprung part" is anything inside the car side wishbone attachments. It is the masses that interact with the road entirely through the absorbtion and release of the springs energy. Everything outside the inner pickups is either semi sprung (pull/push rod, suspension elements, brake fluid if they still have it, etc) or unsprung (tires, wheels, brake hardware, that aero fender, etc). The rule as written, and as interperated against Renault, is everything attached to the sprung part of the car cannot move in relation to the rest of the sprung mass for the benefit of aerodynamic gain. In Renault's case, the stability of the front aero platform was the aero gain.

Regarding composite monocoques, I believe that MP4/1 made its debut at the third Grand Prix of the season in Argentina. So, whilst it didn't race, because the Type 88 appeared at Long Beach, that makes it the first F1 car to debut with a composite tub.

The original intent of the rule requiring aerodynamic devices goes back the the FIA's ban of suspension-attached wings after the Spanish Grand Prix in 1969. It was aimed at the high wings that were pioneered on the Chaparral 2E and adopted wholesale in F1 in 1968, especially by Lotus. Those wings had never been a problem in sports cars, but Chapman being Chapman, he skimped on the strength of the supports to save weight. Something like the 88 was completely beyond conception when the rule was devised.

Can you do a video about when Tyrrell had them strange V shaped wings in 1997 please? Ferrari tried it too in 1998. Both didn't go well.

I love the way those ground effect cars look without front wings. Especially that picture you always see of the Williams Saudia.

I have an Engine cover from a Manor F1 car, it's taller than I, yet feels lighter and easier to lift than a bag of sugar... I agree, weird is the right word! Also I have disabilities, a bag of sugar is genuinely harder for me to lift than this 6 foot engine cover 🤷‍♂️

You got it backwards. The Deltawing was designed for the IRL series first. It wasn’t excepted, for reasons other then it’s performance. Later it was further developed for IMSA and Le Mons as you described.

Entirely sprung part of the car means everything that is connected in some way to the springs (also refered to as sprung mass) and part of the system that transfers the bumps of the road to the springs e.g. wheels, tires, brakes (also refered to as unsprung mass). I'm sorry for my probably bad choice of words, but I'm not a native speaker.

I saw the 88 run in practice at Long Beach from a pretty amazing vantage point from a building in the esses section through the old Pike following the Queen's hairpin. I was pretty young, about 14 so what did I know? But it wasn't my first race and all I thought was the car wasn't fast but it was still going in every direction than the one de Angelis wanted it to go. I don't think they could have made it work given the drivers had trouble telling which chassis was doing what. With today's data collection, it might have had a chance.

It's wrong to think of an upper and lower chassis. They were more like an inner and outer chassis. The 'inner' tub was completely encased in the 'outer' aerodynamic bodywork that included the floor, sidepods and rear wing.

4:45 I held a Specialized Epic MTB once. Like lifting a piece of paper.

In the early 80's I was driving a 1968 Mustang fastback. Just like Steve McQueen Mustang. I put rubber skirts on it. The first thing I noticed was how quiet the wind noise became. My only available test track were the huge corners at freeway on ramps in the United States. Before skirts, 40mph After skirts, 45mph I can't imagine what traveling over 100mph.

awesome video

its not the 2CV that had hydro suspension, it was the Citröen DS

Nice Mock the Week reference 😁👍

Ballestre was really a mobster

Call it Chasseur. Similar to chicken Chasseur. Works for me......

As I understand it, the sprung part of the car is all the stuff that's ultimately resting on springs. Imagine a lightning bolt striking the part of the car you're talking about today: if it has to go through the suspension to reach the ground, it's a sprung part of the car. The really heartbreaking part of the whole saga was in Colin's press statement from the Argentinian GP, where he signed off: "By the time you read this I shall be on my way to watch the U.S. Space Shuttle, an achievement of mankind which will refresh my mind from what I have been subjected to in the last four weeks." I wonder what he'd say if you went back in time and told him eventually we'd retire the shuttle without really replacing it...

He should have hung a control arm or damper for each wheel from the upper chassis so it could be argued that it was, in fact, the "sprung" portion of the car.

Modern ice hockey sticks are made of carbon fibre composites. Growing up playing hockey in Canada in the 90's I always used traditional wood sticks. The first time I used a composite stick I was shocked at how strong and light it was. And also that it was hollow, being only about 1-2mm thick throughout the entire shaft of the stick.

Nice video Aidan. The 88 was a really interesting car. Just looking at your PC specs there (looks like you upgraded recently!), you need a B550 motherboard to take advantage of the speeds your PCIe Gen 4 CPU and graphics card are capable of doing - you're losing between 5 and 10% of performance using a PCIe Gen 3 motherboard. Maybe also some Gen 4 storage too, NVMe drives are getting much cheaper now.

Thanks for clearing things up for me aiden. I had heard another story about the 88. Yes. It was 2 chassis. But it couldn't be set up properly to actually race competitively. I had heard that you had to set up both chassis independently to each other and to get it to work properly and in the sweet spot was as bad as setting up a 2023 Mercedes or a 1996 ferrari. And thats why it was scrapped.

IIRC, the Lotus 78 wasn't intended to be a ground effects car. The idea was that the sidepods would be another "wing" just mounted amidships. The skirts were just another version of endplates, meant to keep air flowing over the wing profile (upside down relative to an airplane, because downforce). But Lotus found the car was generating much more downforce than they expected given the size of the wing elements and their chordal profile. That's when they realized that with the sideskirts sealing off the sides the whole underside of the car was acting as a Bernoulli tunnel to generate downforce. The Lotus 79 was then a deliberate attempt to capture this effect to increase roadholding.

As I remember, the ground effects cars developed enough downforce that immensely stiff springs were required so that there was hardly a suspension at all. The drivers had a hard time driving the cars and (at least an excuse for the second chassis) was to allow the drivers to be spared the harshness of the ride that affected, among other things, their vision. This video dovetails nicely with a request I was considering yesterday and that is to do a deep dive into Jim Hall and his Chaparrals. I feel he and his cars do not get nearly the attention and accolades they deserve since they introduced, among many other things, composite tub, clutchless transmission (thought to be automatic but really the clutch was replaced with a torque converter) articulated flaps first and then articulated wings, side mounted radiators, and even a fully monocoque chassis. I'm sure you could do them justice. I enjoy your videos. Keep it up!

Saucer section, enjoying Picard S3? Good vids as well.

I saw the 88 at the Lotus museum. They can't resist taking digs at Ferrari any chance they get because they got it banned

This is what f1 was always about at least to me and my grandad. These new cars are getting way too similar.

Not sure if you've covered active suspension before, but this would lead on nicely as teams (Lotus, initially) innovated to maintain a constant ride height by removing conventional springs and dampers.

Something you missed was just how much of an uproar this car caused. It got so bad, that Chapman was actually threatened by the FIA. They told him that if an 88 was so much as _entered_ into the British Grand Prix, Lotus would not only be completely disqualified from from the race, but from _both_ championships.

So it's basically the Gundam Virtue of cars.

I really wish there would be one class where anything goes, besides like 5 rules... just to see what could be achieved... Thanks again.

I can still hear JMB in "Senna" bellowing 'its against the Regulation"...

I can't wait to see a NASCAR at le mans and I'm so happy JB is driving it I have never held carbon fibre but I have a piece of redbull in a clear acrylic block

the deltawing was leadng the 24 hour of daytona..doing great..but an idiot parked his car in the middle of the track before a turn and another idiot did not warn a 3rd idiot to slow down and avoid the broken car.. it crashed and ended up a greta story

Sorry for asking repeatedly, but what is the name of the intro tune? It's madd catchy and lives rent free in my head. Loving the F1 stories btw.

Ever since the high wing cars of the 60's were banned all aero parts of the car have to be attached to the sprung chassis and their loads passed through the entire suspension system to the tires. Those aero parts also must be rigid. The 88 was in violation of both of those rules as the outer chassis attached to the inner chassis suspension ARMS with a spring system of its own. It should have never received a FIA certification in the first place.

chapman should have hired saul goodman

Hiring Nixon's lawyer might not be the move to make, considering. :P

unsprung part = wheels, hubs and things before the things that go boing in the night. talking about non moving aero devices, what is the DRS ?

If the Williams 15C is on the list of mad experiments because it had active suspension then that's wrong. The Lotus 92 was the first F1 car to use active suspension so I believe. I understand that Williams just perfected the concept after Lotus struggled with development. Interested to know which innovation the 15C had to be on the list.

The problem was a matter of which side of the pivot point the aerodynamic components were. The aerodynamic components of the 88 were _all_ on the wrong side. A fault with this video - and several others - is that they describe the outer chassis as being attached with very heavy springs, which it was not. Other videos show that it could be pushed down with relative ease and I believe the total pressure was about 20 kilos. The other problem is that they fail to point out _where_ exactly these attachment points were. In fact, they pushed down on the lower suspension arms, just next to where the A arms attached to the bottom of the uprights, thus putting them on the unsprung part of the car. The Lotus 88 ran at the US Grand Prix West and was nine seconds off the pace. After protests by no fewer than 11 teams, Clerk of the Course, Chris Pook, ruled it ineligible. De Angelis took it out again and it was immediately black flagged and he and Mansell were left to drive the 81. Tyrrell, Fittipaldi, ATS and Theodore were the only teams not to lodge a protest. Chapman tried several times to get it to run in the following months and was overruled each time. He took his complaint to FISA and the FIA court, where it was ruled ineligible again. That should have been the end of the matter but Chapman insisted on pushing the point with what he called the 'B' spec car. The stewards at Silverstone approved it but the other teams protested it again on the grounds that the 'B' spec car was no different in any area that mattered. The FIA court ruling carried more weight than the stewards verdict - as it should - and the car was again ruled ineligible. In the end, while the 88 was a very clever idea, the project was really all about semantics.

I gotta admit, your Nixon impression was spot on. That's exactly how I remember him as a kid who didn't care about politics.

Jean Christophe Bellion 😂🤣😂🤣

Miraculous you found a picture of the 88 not being driven by the guy (whose name escapes me) with the dog ears on his crash helmet. Edit to add, although I'm probably late to the party, the sprung part is anything that the shock absorbers damps, the unsprung part is the rest. In this case the secondary chassis (the driver bit) sprung itself thus was unsprung weight according to Chapman, but the FIA saw it was unsprung but attached to the bit that was sprung and thus falls within the law of rigid sprung weight and thus banned. I've now written sprung so much it's lost all meaning and will go back to my dinner.

Have you guys seen the interview with Giorgio Piola? He seems to recall some big issues with this car.

I have a Mountainbike made out of carbon fiber oh and Parts of some Porsches hehe

"entirely sprung": One has to admire the bizarre way that the F1 rules are written. They sound strict but don't bother with defining their terms.

1st attempted "wing car" 1969 BRM, abandoned. Probably because it was not conventional.......

Wouldn't the plural of chassis be CHASSI?

"has any one ever held anything made of carbon fibre?"...( Anglers 👀)

ah yes when Chapman "died of a heart attack in 1982" wink wink

If aerodynamic aids have to be fixed, how is DRS allowed, (as I don't understand the rule book 😅,)

You could make a long video just from the ways Colin Chapman tried to cheat. It was never dull.

The way I understand this is: 1) for ground effect to work, the car needs very stiff suspension to maintain correct ride height, but 2) this means the driver's spine takes a hell of a beating. Therefore, 3) you put most of the suspension between the driver's tub and the car's structure (rather than between the car's structure and the wheels). So, the car is stiffly sprung but the driver isn't. Couldn't they have done this by padding the driver's seat though? Wouldn't that have been simpler?

I'm not sure why but your last few videos it seems like the audio and video get off sync by the end. Might be on my end but idk

I never understood why they had no front wings. Groundeffect only takes effect some way behind the front axle, and then only at speed, doesn’t it? So in low speed corners you’d get understeer like a greased pig, I guess. Especially with the stiffer setup. Here comes slow, bumpy, hillridden Monaco! Someone with a technical degree please explain.

Paul Bell-ondo

Lets face it, if that had been Ligier or Renault coming up with that idea old old JMB would have fought tooth and nail to make it fully legal.

Buy a hat bro 👍🇦🇺

Chassissesasizzississis

2 chassis, 1 car

Chassae

F1 politics are almost always a downer to the sport. Now back to thee 1000 miles of Sebring

OK, if you don't make a F1 video after today then I don't think you're even British. I think you should have to eat Fries with Mayonnaise in Belgium, get corrected by a 70 year old man holding a small bag filled with the crap of the also small dog he is carrying while telling you to call them Pommes Frites. Also the Mayonnaise is flavored with Pine Nuts and SIX Bay Leaves! Because Belgium! You also have to like the movie "In Bruges", not because it's good, but because it's in Belgium. That is all.

What did Balestre say? Was it ‘The Best Decision is my Decision’?