Lotus's major coup for the season was the signing of Ayrton Senna from the Toleman team. Senna — still without a Grand Prix win but already recognised as an exceptional talent — replaced Nigel Mansell, who had moved to Williams. He partnered Elio de Angelis, who had finished third in the Drivers' Championship with the 95T and was the team's experienced lead driver.
Senna was notable as the first driver signed to Lotus since the death of Colin Chapman in December 1982, a fact that underlined the team's ambition to rebuild its standing in the sport.
The 97T was broadly similar in concept to the 95T but incorporated aerodynamic ideas borrowed from the defunct Lotus 96T Indycar project. Among these was an early form of bargeboards, placed between the front wheels and the sidepods to improve airflow around the sides of the car. Ducarouge also circumvented a ban on the small winglets that had appeared on rear wings in 1984 by repositioning them on the trailing edges of the sidepods instead, maintaining their aerodynamic function within the letter of the regulations.
The 97T proved competitive, taking eight pole positions across the season — seven by Senna and one by de Angelis — and winning three races in total. Senna's first Formula One victory came at the Portuguese Grand Prix in Estoril, where he won by over a minute in monsoon conditions, a performance widely regarded as one of the outstanding drives of the 1985 season. His second win followed at the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, again in mixed wet and dry conditions.
De Angelis added the team's third victory at the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, the result of Alain Prost's McLaren being disqualified in the hour after the race for being underweight. It was de Angelis's second and final Formula One win, both achieved with Lotus.
Despite the pole positions and victories the team finished fourth in the Constructors' Championship, tied on points with Williams but ranked behind them because Williams had won more races over the course of the year.
The 97T's greatest weakness was the Renault engine's reliability and fuel consumption. The turbo unit was competitive in terms of power but was demanding on fuel over race distances and prone to mechanical failure at high-speed circuits where the engine worked hardest. Senna failed to finish in all but one race before the Austrian Grand Prix, suffering engine failures at Monaco, France, Germany, South Africa, and Australia. He also ran out of fuel at Imola and Silverstone. De Angelis adapted to these constraints earlier in the season and scored more consistently in the opening rounds.
On slow, tight circuits — Monaco, Detroit, and Adelaide — the 97T's excellent handling made it a genuine front-runner. On faster tracks the fuel consumption problem forced the drivers to reduce turbo boost, limiting their ability to convert qualifying pace into race results.
The Lotus 97T represented the high point of Team Lotus's turbocharged era and the most sustained period of competitiveness the team achieved in the mid-1980s. The 1986 Lotus 98T and the 1987 Honda-powered 99T continued this momentum, though the team would never again match the heights of the Chapman years. The 97T achieved broader cultural recognition when Senna's car was included in the video game Gran Turismo 6 via a May 2014 update as part of an Ayrton Senna tribute, appearing in two liveries.
Gallery · 1 related image
