Few things look as right as a Lotus in John Player Special livery, especially one driven by Ayrton Senna during his two-year stint with the team. Just such a car is being consigned by RM Sotheby’s following restoration work in the United Kingdom. The company expects it to bring $9.5 million to $12 million in a sealed-bid auction.
The 1986 Lotus 98T built on the success of the 97T in which Senna took his first F1 win the previous year. The one being auctioned off is Chassis 98T-3, in which the Brazilian won the 1986 United States Grand Prix and Spanish Grand Prix, took five pole positions, and another three podiums during eight drives of the car. It was one of four chassis raced by Lotus during the 1986 season.
It may not have been a championship contender, but the 98T was perhaps the last truly good Lotus F1 car. Designed by Gérard Ducarouge—whose previous work included Jackie Stewart’s title-winning Matras—the 98T was more compact than the 97T thanks to a smaller fuel cell resulting from new rules that dropped race-day fuel allowances by 1.3 gallons.
These were also the waning days of ridiculously over-boosted turbocharged engines. Lotus had run Renault engines before, but for 1986 it effectively became the works Renault team following the termination of the French manufacturer’s own effort. Renault held nothing back, supplying Lotus with a 1.5-liter V6 that revved to 12,500 rpm (up from the previous engine’s 11,000 rpm) and developed around 900 horsepower in race trim. Special qualifying engines developed well over 1,000 hp but were only good for a few laps.
Disposable engines represent a very different era from the F1 of today, but represented the state of the art at the time. So does the chassis, made from a mix of aluminum and carbon fiber, with machined aluminum bulkheads and body panels comprised of composite skins filled with aluminum foil.
The 98T was the last F1 car from the original Team Lotus to wear the JPS livery. The team currently known as Alpine used a lookalike scheme when it raced as Lotus in the 2010s, but without the tobacco sponsorship. Haas’ disastrous partnership with Rich Energy also produced cars with a similar look. But neither was anywhere near as competitive as the black-and-gold cars of the 1970s and 1980s.
Lotus switched to a yellow-and-blue Camel livery and Honda power for 1987. The new 99T was somewhat competitive, with two wins to its name, but sacrificing factory Renault backing put Lotus at a disadvantage, one it was unable to recover from when Senna left to fulfill his destiny at McLaren the following year. The team would wither away until its demise in 1994. Really, the 98T was the end of an era in more ways than one.