Although it's potential was slow to show, the RS10 proved to be the best car on the grid by the French GP. In the 5th round, the brand new Renault RS10 was unveiled at the Belgian GP. Gilles Villeneuve and Jody Scheckter finished the race 1-2 and were only contested by the Renault of Jean-Pierre Jabouille. The car was Ferrari's response to Ground Effect. However, Ligier's dominance would be short lived by the 3rd round in Kyalami, where the brand new Ferrari 312T4 was unveiled. The Ligier JS11 proved to be the new car to beat, as drivers Jacques Laffite and Patrick Depailler qualified 1-2, and Laffite won the race. However, they were achieving results far above what they were previously achieving. Every team competed for the front along with Lotus, except for Arrows. That said, these features were included in the design of the succeeding Lotus 80 car.After the domination of Lotus in the 1978 F1 Championship, and the incredible innovation of Ground Effect, the rest of the teams scrambled to implement Ground Effect into their chassis for 1979.Īt the first race in Buenos Aires, 4 other teams came prepared with Ground Effect cars to challenge Lotus Tyrrell, Ligier, McLaren and Arrows. Initially, a large part of the bodywork is actually highly raked (angled down) and had sidepods that look like ‘Coke bottles’ to further increase the downforce, but was scrapped because they were not needed. Learn more about ground effect here! Compared to the Lotus 78, it produce as much as 30% more downforce!īy mounting a fuel cell behind the driver, the centre of gravity is very close to the middle of the car, improving the handling performance of the car. The famed vehicle is touted for starting the era of aerodynamics in Formula One! DesignĪ key feature of the Lotus 79 was the use of venturi tunnels in the sidepods to generate large amounts of downforce.

It won the 1978 constructor’s championship in dominant fashion, due to its superior downforce levels compared to other cars at the time. The Lotus 79 is the first F1 car to incorporate ground effect in its design, and was used by the Lotus F1 team in the 19 season, to much success.

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