In the summer school holidays of 1993 I went to Spa with my father for the Belgian Grand Prix at the legendary Spa-Francorchamps circuit. It was the first time I had gone to a race with just him, and I was more excited than ever to spend the weekend at the track. It didn’t matter […]
If you’re reading this as an F1 fan the first thing that will probably pop into your head is, that’s the year Ayrton Senna died. Well of course you’d be correct, but for the Collins family that wasn’t the only tragic event to occur that year. My father had been fighting what seemed like an […]
I wouldn’t be surprised if you have been wondering as you have read these blogs, how much my mother supported my father; the man who spent their entire wedding night on the phone to the UK trying to get a job interview with Colin Chapman? Then, barely a month later, he whisked her off to […]
Tuesday 24 March 1981 Peter Collins nearly drowned in Brazil. Nigel Mansell saved him. Here’s what happened… In the midst of the Lotus Type 88 saga, and having squeezed in some extra testing while in the States, the Team took a well deserve two days break upon their arrival in Brazil ahead of the second […]
The Lotus 88 was conceived in the autumn of 1980 following a wind tunnel session evaluating a new Lotus road car. It was during this session that Peter Wright identified the value of separating the aerodynamic loads from the road handling chassis requirements. It offered the potential to feed the aerodynamic loads directly into the […]
The late seventies/early eighties was a time of great excitement and innovation in Formula One. Downforce was the aim of the game and teams were experimenting with skirts, wings and underbodies to try to get as much downforce as possible. Before carbon fibre was used in Formula One the car’s monocoques were constructed from single […]
It had been a pretty intense introduction into the world of Formula One for my father. Colin Chapman was a perfectionist and a hard taskmaster to say the least. And emotions were high as Lotus were having a particularly bad season. After a lot of struggles with the Lotus 80 at the start of the […]
I’ve always believed in fate. My parents believe in it and one of the greatest examples of it, for me, is the story of how my father ended up not only working in Formula One, but for his dream team, Lotus. But let’s start at the beginning. In his hometown of Sydney, opportunities to see […]