LOTUS 97T - ARYTON SENNA - 1985 F1 SEASON - Mug

The 97T marked the start of a brief return to the successful days of the 1960s and 1970s for Lotus, which was continued by the 98T of 1986 and the Honda-powered 99T of 1987. The 97T had perhaps the best handling of any car in the 1985 season, and it was at its most competitive on tight, slow street circuits such as Monaco, Detroit and Adelaide, although it was also competitive on almost every other type of circuit it raced on. However the Renault engine had issues with unreliability and fuel consumption; Senna and de Angelis suffered at high-speed tracks, which were more demanding on fuel consumption, so they had to turn down the turbo boost to save fuel and possibly the engine as well, although de Angelis likely caught on to this earlier than Senna, as the Italian consistently finished in the points in the beginning of the season whereas Senna failed to finish in all but one race before the Austrian Grand Prix. Like a number of others Senna ran out of fuel at Imola, which was the hard