Lotus 95T - Renault, at the 2002 Goodwood Festival of Speed, by Wouter Melissen - Ultimatecarpage.com
The Lotus 95T was an F1 car designed by Gérard Ducarouge for Team Lotus' use in the 1984 Formula One season.
It was Lotus' first newly designed chassis since the Lotus 88 of 1981 and was designed for and was powered by a Renault turbo V6 engine with twin Garrett turbochargers coupled with the Lotus/Hewland 5 speed Manual Gearbox.
It was a development of the previous Lotus 94T, which had proved competitive at the end of 1983.
The team switched from Pirelli to Goodyear tyres for the new season, but the new rubber was not on a par with the Michelins run by the McLaren team who won 12 of the 16 races in 1984.
The car was a significant improvement, and helped the team be competitive consistently. Elio de Angelis was in contention for victory on more than one occasion, and four podium places along with several other points finishes helped him to third in the drivers' championship. He also scored a pole position. It was a surprisingly impressive season for the Italian, who was in with an outside chance for the championship until the German Grand Prix, after which it was a two horse race between McLaren drivers Alain Prost and eventual champion Niki Lauda. Nigel Mansell had a chance to win the Monaco Grand Prix during a rain hit race, but crashed in the early stages while leading.
Other potential podium finishes at Dallas and Estoril were unrewarded with reliability problems, but he did manage to score his first career pole position at Dallas and finished on the podium twice in France and at the Dutch Grand Prix. Mansell departed the team for Wiliams at the end of the season after enduing a difficult relationship with team boss Peter Warr.
By season's end, Lotus finished third in the constructors' championship with 47 points, their best result since 1978. The 95T helped to re-establish Lotus as a force in F1 throughout the mid 1980s. It was replaced by the Lotus 97T in 1985.