Genius designer remembers Lotus F1 team's final days: 'They didn't invest'

“I got fired by him twice,” Wright said. “The second time he took off his corduroy cap, threw it on the ground and jumped up and down on it. Which was quite impressive.

“Then I explained what I’d done had to be done and he said, ‘Ah, OK’. Picked up his hat, dusted it off, put it back on his head and walked off.”

Under the guidance of Chapman, Wright had helped the team develop its ground-effect 78 and 79 cars, the first being the winner and the second clinching both titles with Mario Andretti and Ronnie Peterson.

However, following Chapman’s sudden passing in 1982, the team began a slow decline, culminating in the early ‘90s when the team was at risk of going under.

By this point Wright had moved away from the grand prix side of the business, but was called back into the fold to help out.

“I was managing director of Lotus Engineering for two years, which was not really up my street as a manager of 500 engineers and technicians – although I learned a lot.

“Tony Rudd was helping the Chapman family run Team Lotus, and they were basically running out of money.

“That’s when Tony said to me, ‘Team Lotus is going to close unless somebody does something about it. What about you?’

“All I could affect was the engineering side, but I said I’d talk to my mate Peter Collins, who had some unfinished F1 business after leaving Benetton [mid-1989]. God knows how we did it, but we scrambled together some sort of a deal to take over.”

After the rescue the team soldiered on, and did see an upturn in results by 1992 with Mika Häkkinen and Johnny Herbert behind the wheel, finishing fifth in the constructors’ championship.

However, it always seemed as if Wright and co were fighting a losing battle. He said the team needed investors “but the Gulf War saw off any sponsors. So we went into the 1991 season with the previous year’s car, and we kept the team going for four years, although I know not how. We were on a wing and a prayer.

“In the last year but one we had Cosworth engines and owed them quite a lot of money, then got a Mugen engine for the next year.

“Honda were, we understood, very interested in Team Lotus, partly because we were back doing active suspension again and they couldn’t believe a two-bit outfit was managing it. They were looking for a team to put money into.

“Cosworth reckoned if they threatened us with administration Honda would come up and bail us out. They were wrong, so we went down.

“The big problem with Team Lotus was following Chapman’s death they didn’t invest in technology, whereas McLaren and Williams did. They built big wind tunnels, formed relationships with engine manufacturers. Team Lotus did not do that. It’s unfair to think the family could have raised the money. But that’s why it failed.”

Peter Wright (1946-2025): remembering the ground effects guru • From BRM to Lotus to the FIA, Peter Wright was one of the great F1 engineers. Shortly before his untimely death, Damien Smith met him at his off-grid home Read the full interview in the latest issue of Motor Sport Read now