Lotus Esprit Race Cars

[proracer]

Hello,

I am looking for photos and written information on the Racing Lotus Esprit.

I want to ad these to a book that I have been putting together for the last two years.

I have covered the Lotus cars in the US, Holland and Australia.

I need early Racing Esprit's, 1976-1988.

Please send photos and information to: jpenn35633@yahoo.com

Thank you,

Jim Pennington

[Mark Blanchard]

Here are a few:

And another here: Clicky

[proracer]

Mark,

Do you have the race history on these early cars? Tracks raced and results......

Thank you, Jim

Edited November 29, 2009 by Bibs
Removed quote of previous post

[Mark Blanchard]

I'm afraid I don't much of the history. All I know is the top pics were from the 1981 Nurburgring and Gerry Marshall was racing the Turbo Esprit at Silverstone and I'm pretty sure it was in the Uniroyal Championship.

Edited November 29, 2009 by Mark Blanchard

[lotusmotors]

The red car was raced by Richard Jenvey - who now runs the well known throttle body manufacturing company - Jenvery Dynamics. It had a 2.0l semi-works engine (dry sumped) and ran a Hewland transaxle. Last I heard Richard still had the car and was dusting it off ready to race again. I think it ran in Group 5 in its day - but Richard should be easy enough to get hold of via his website amd give you all the information.

Nic Olson (who works at AP racing) has campaigned a naturally aspirated G car for many years; and I think it won it's championship this year after a few years away - he also owned George Howard Chappel's Turbo Esprit race car which won the 750 sportscar series; George ran the Lotus GT1 race team in the early 1990s. He now runs the ProDrive Le Mans team that campaign the Aston Martins.

Hope that helps a bit...

Garry Kemp

[USAndretti42]

The number 11 car was owned by Peter Hall, the owner of ICS. I think the car is now in the Haynes motor museum. It has been mentioned on here. Have you tried running a search of the forum for "racing Esprits?"

[proracer]

Guys,

Thanks for the input. I am on my way to gather more information......

Jim

[Mark Blanchard]

If you want some info on the X180-R or GT2, click here:

Clicky

Clicky

[wolflyn]

http://www.psychoontyres.co.uk/jumping-coffee-cups-lotus-esprit-s1-group-5/

[plumdeplakmuis]

Any info yet on the 2 Dutch Koni Production Car series cars

http://www.sunbeam-raceworld.nl/Over%20de%20Esprit.html (in Dutch)

One (Unmollested) is owned by Mr. Hans willem te Pas, or Hans Hugenholz,

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/h-w-te-pas/39/440/315

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/hans-hugenholtz/27/742/624 (Nice guy who can forward you to a lot of other connections)

The other is used by Dick van Elk in the Dutch Supercar series, and completely modified.

Also there still should be some nice info and blueprints available on the GT1 esprits in the Netherlands,

by Mr. Toine Hezemans. He had a lot of old stuff in his factory in Eindhoven.

Other nice lead for old racing esprits:

http://bringatrailer.com/?s=Lotus+Esprit&x=0&y=0

http://bringatrailer.com/2008/09/29/neglected-endurance-racer-1978-lotus-esprit-s2/

There used to be some S1 silhouette Esprits in the Swedish GT

Also some 8 years ago there was a S1 silhouette style car for sale in the US.

On the us http://www.sportscarworld.com/ site they also used to advertise a S1 racer.

[bosbon_be]

These guy's were tuning the 4 cyl. Racing Esprits for the factory, you can read their story on their web- site:

http://www.rpmpower.be/site/index.php?id_surf=&idcat=100153&quellePage=999&surf_lang=nl&id_menu=100153

[wolflyn]

Silverstone 12.6.83

Gerry Marshall in the ICS Lotus Esprit Turbo for a support race at the Marlboro European F3 round.

Sadly the Lotus suffered terminal turbo failure and retired in flames on lap 4.

Pete Hall in the ICS Lotus at Snetterton 1982

Edited July 6, 2012 by wolflyn