Lotus 98T

Surely one of the most famous racing cars of all time, JPS Lotus 98T chassis 004 was Ayrton Senna’s race car for the latter part of the classic 1986 Formula 1 season. The car's debut was at the last Grand Prix to be held at Brands Hatch after chassis 003 was crashed in a testing accident. It went on to score four pole positions out of eight that Senna achieved that year and finished on the podium three times. It was also the car in which Senna famously battled with Nelson Piquet for the lead of the inaugural Hungarian Grand Prix.

The car arrived at our workshops in 2004 in a less than driveable condition having suffered a crash during a demonstration earlier in the year. Aside from the bodywork damage, the rear wing was split and many of the suspension components had been tampered with to make the car appear cosmetically sound.

So started a two-year ground-up restoration, totaling over 2500 hours. Unlike the Penskes which were always immaculate, we faced a serious danger of overdoing the finish on the Lotus. If it was polished to death it would never look as it did in period. For this reason many hours were spent painstakingly reconditioning as many original parts as possible to bring them back to how they would have looked straight out of the Lotus workshops at Ketteringham Hall.

Many of the original systems such as the hydraulic ride height adjustment system had been stripped out and had to be researched and replaced. The boost system had also been tampered with and required much attention to bring it back to as raced configuration. It was felt it was essential the car be able to produce race level horse power for historical reasons even if the setting was never used.

If there was ever an example of our level of detailing then the Lotus is probably the car that was the most difficult to get right. Those who have seen it agree the effort was worth the cost. To see Martin Brundle drive the Lotus 98T for ITV's F1 coverage click HERE.