Emerson Fittipaldi: The best car of my career

The Lotus 72 was such an important car for me –definitely the best car of my career. I have driven it recently at the Goodwood events and it still feels just as good after all these years.”

That, in a nutshell, expresses the great Brazilian world champion’s abiding love, and respect, for the car in which he won his first grand prix and the first of two titles in 1972. When he joined the F1 team in 1970 he wasin the Lotus 49, but after the tragedy of team leader Jochen Rindt’s death at Monza in September he was given the 72 and won the American Grand Prix at Watkins Glen in October, his first victory.

So, how did driving the 72 compare with the Lotus 49?

“The 49 was a very forgiving car to drive, a lot of suspension travel, some roll as you went into the corners, but it felt like a heavy car,” says Fittipaldi. “The 72 was much more agile, it was lighter, more nervous, had much stiffer suspension with the torsion bars, and it was fun to drive, good brakes, good turn-in, very different from the 49.”

It was a difficult time, in the aftermath of Rindt’s accident. Suddenly, at 23, he was the number one driver for Lotus and much was expected of him.

“Yes, I was under tremendous pressure, especially as the first time I drove the 72, in Friday practice at Monza, I crashed it at the Parabolica. Colin [Chapman] was not happy. It was a brand-new car. I was only doing slow laps and, approaching the corner, I looked in the mirror, saw Jack Brabham coming fast behind me, and I missed my braking point, hit [Ignazio] Giunti’s Ferrari in front of me, flew over the top, and crashed. So the first time I drove the 72 at racing speed was at Watkins Glen for the American Grand Prix. In the back of my mind was the crash at Monza and I felt under great pressure. I was the number one driver now and I knew I must go fast but I must not crash the car. The 72 was very good at Watkins Glen. I was enjoying the car; it was wet at the start and I lost some positions, but when the track dried the car was so agile and I could maximise all that was so good about the 72. To get my first win was fantastic of course and with Ickx finishing fourth it meant Jochen Rindt would be the world champion.”

The following year, in 1971 with the 72D, his season was disrupted by a road accident and not a single victory came his way. Why was the 72D off the pace compared with the 72C of 1970?

“What happened was the invention of slick tyres. They had so much more grip. The 72 would only be fast on the low-grip tracks like Monaco so Colin’s chief designer Maurice Phillippe had the challenge of redesigning the suspension. It was too flexible, and he needed to make it more rigid. Anything we did to the set-up of the car just did not work because, on the slick Firestone tyres, the suspension was flexing, and these new very grippy tyres had upset our car.

“Those tyres gave so much grip you could break the suspension just from a standing start. It was crazy, and if you remember, we were hand-cutting these tyres for wet weather. So yes, ’71 was absolutely not a good year for me or for the team.”

“The 72 was more agile than the 49, lighter and more nervous”

Did he think Colin Chapman was distracted by the Lotus 56 gas turbine car that was being built and tested that year?

“No, he was focused on the 72, he knew we had a problem from the start of that season. He saw that set-up changes made no difference, and the suspension was redesigned, but it wasn’t until the Rothmans World Championship Victory Race at Brands Hatch in October that the new suspension was really working. I came second, just a couple of tenths behind Peter Gethin’s BRM. Nowthe 72 had good grip, on a bumpy track, and we thought, ‘OK, now we have a good car for 1972.’”

They certainly did have a good car and, unbelievably, it’s 50 years since his first win.

“Ah, no, please, don’t talk about it. I don’t feel old, I feel good, you know.” That’s typical Emmo, always on his toes, something of a Peter Pan, but it is half a century since he won that first title in an unbeatable Lotus 72.

“Yes, we made it work. The car was fantastic, the suspension was so much better. We started from a better place. Maurice [Philippe, co-designer] had done a good job, there was good grip. The car was now responding to set-up changes, we had a better balance, Colin was happy, everybody was happy, the team was very solid, working so well. The first time I thought I could win the championship was when we won the Spanish Grand Prix at Jarama at the beginning of May. This showed the car was good on different tracks – we’d already been second at Kyalami – and was now consistently fast. I said to Colin, ‘We have a chance to go for the championship.’”

What did he think when he first saw the new black and gold JPS livery, such a striking colour scheme on an F1 car?

“I went to London to see this black car and I said to Colin, ‘You should put handles on this – it’s a coffin!’. No, seriously, it was beautiful. One of the most beautiful colour schemes ever seen on an F1 car, so elegant, so different. You remember the turbine car, the Lotus 56, was painted gold with some black? I drove it at Monza in ’71 and that was also a test for the John Player people to see the colours. They didn’t want the whole car to be black so they went for the gold and the black on the 72.”

In 1973 Ronnie Peterson joined the team, replacing Reine Wisell. Did that unsettle Emerson? Was he annoyed with Chapman?

“No. Ronnie was my best friend in Formula 1. I was happy to share the team with him – we had a good relationship. I won the first two races and the fourth, almost maximum points, and Ronnie had three retirements.

“I thought, ‘I can be world champion again in the Lotus 72,’ but then I had four races without any points at all, and Ronnie was now on the podium. So we went to Monza and still we had a good relationship; our wives were good friends too, and we shared all our information. So, it was all OK until we qualified 1-2 at Monza, Ronnie on pole. I still had a chance of the championship but then Colin upset me. He said if we were 1-2 in the race, nobody close to us, I would be allowed to win as I still had a mathematical chance of the title.

“We drove away from everybody, but with 15 laps to go there was no signal from Colin, 10 laps and still no signal, so I started dicing with Ronnie, attacking for the lead, but I couldn’t pass. I was really upset with Colin. I don’t know why he did that. He said he decided not to give the signal. After this I made the decision not to renew my contract at the end of the year. Colin called me. He said, ‘Emerson, you must stay with Lotus,’ but I said, ‘No, I had a chance of another championship with Lotus but you gave up that chance.’”

How did it come about that, with offers on the table, he went to McLaren for 1974?

“I knew Patrick Duffeler, the promotions director for Philip Morris and the Marlboro brand. We used to fly to Lausanne together after the races. I’d lived there since 1969. Patrick said, ‘I want you to drive for Philip Morris and you can choose the team,’ so I went to England and spoke to Bernie, Ken Tyrrell and McLaren. I wanted a competitive team. When Colin heard I was going to McLaren he called my wife and said, ‘Whyis Emerson leaving us?’ But I’d made my decision and that was that.”

“It’s the best racing car I ever drove, for sure, a fantastic car, outstanding”

How hard was that decision after four years racing for Lotus, the innovative engineering of the 72 in all its various guises, and his first Formula 1 World Championship at the age of 25, which was the youngest ever at the time?

“Well, look, it wasn’t easy. I was so thankful and lucky to have worked with Colin. He was amazing, a fantastic guy, so ahead of his time. He was a human computer, like he had telemetry inside his head. Sometimes, after four years together, we didn’t need to talk. He just knew what I wanted from the car and how to deliver that. It was a shame what happened at Monza, but it happened. I don’t know why.”

The M23 McLaren was a less sophisticated car but it proved to be fast and reliable, giving Emerson his second world championship.

“Yes, it was a good car, very good in fast corners, but it was difficult to make the suspension geometry work at all the different tracks. Gordon Coppuck had produced a great design but we were making many changesall the time. We had long wheelbase, short wheelbase, different front wings, different rear wings and different geometries to try at every test. We had to make the M23 competitive at every track, so a lot of testing, whereas the Lotus 72 was so much more consistent, wherever we went. But with the M23 we had to work hard to make it more consistent. McLaren was a great team, great people, we never stopped working, and going into the last race of the year in America we were level on points with Clay Regazzoni’s Ferrari.

“In the end we won three races and took the championship by three points. The last race at Watkins Glen was tense. I had to finish ahead of the Ferrari. This was McLaren’s first world championship and the first of many for a car with Marlboro sponsorship.”

Perhaps there were times when he wished he’d stayed one more year with Lotus? Ronnie Peterson was still winning races with the 72E.

“No, my decision to leave was not about the car. I felt I’d been let down. I knew the 72 was still a good car, it had become very adaptable to different circuits. And remember, we won the constructors’ championship with the 72 in 1973. I don’t think Colin needed to make a new car immediately and in fact the Lotus 76 was not as good as the 72E. Both Ronnie and Jacky Ickx preferred the 72 and Ronnie was still winning with that car as late as Monza in September 1974.”

Those four years with the Lotus 72 must give you very special memories from a career in which you’ve had so much success in both F1 and IndyCar…

“Oh yes. The best racing car I ever drove, for sure, a fantastic car, outstanding. I would talk to the car, the car would talk to me. We speak a lot about the 72 but I want to say something about the man who createdit. People say that, as a constructor, Colin Chapman was a hard man, took too many risks, everything on the limit. In some ways this is true because he was also an aeronautical engineer, making everything very lightweight. But, you know, he had a big heart. At the end of 1972 we were having dinner, he looked at me and said, ‘Emerson, I’m afraid I’m getting too close to you. I’m afraid I could lose you at any time.’ I was shocked.

“This goes back to Jimmy Clark. Jimmy’s death had upset Colin so badly. He never wanted to talk about it, but he would talk about winning Indy in 1965 with that little green Lotus 38. He was proud of that, and of course Jimmy was my hero before I came to race in Europe. So you can understand, winning the world championship for Colin in the Lotus 72 was such a big moment in my career.”