Yahoo Autos What Happens When You Reunite Mario Andretti With His Championship-Winning Lotus
There are few things in this world that deliver pure joy like a Cosworth DFV Formula 1 engine wound to 10,000 rpms and beyond. Driven by racing veteran Duncan Dayton at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, the screaming fury generated by the 3.0-liter Cosworth V8 mounted to the rear of Mario Andretti's 1978 world championship-winning Lotus 79 celebrates an era where F1 cars produced rapturous sounds.
The historical importance of the car that carries us on this audio journey is also worth noting.
"This car, R4-race chassis four, won at Zandvoort and won on the road at Monza, but Mario was penalized for jumping the start so it moved him back to sixth, although he still clinched the championship," Dayton told RoadandTrack.com.
The sad circumstances that allowed Andretti and R4 to win the 1978 title are also hard to forget. Lotus teammate and championship rival Ronnie Peterson was gravely injured at the start, succumbed to his wounds the following day, and with Brabham's Niki Lauda too far behind to mount a challenge with two rounds left on the calendar, Andretti was crowned champion amid sorrowful circumstances.
Beyond Monza, the Lotus 79 is also renowned for its revolutionary role in motor racing aerodynamics. As the first car to employ large wing-shape profiles in the underbody, the 79's "ground effects" system produced a level of downforce that went far beyond the figures generated by the McLarens and Ferraris of the day. And with more than 500 hp on tap from Cosworth's "Double Four Valve" V8, Andretti and Peterson ruled 1978 with eight wins from 16 races and a 1-2 in the championship.
After its purchase by Dayton, R4 underwent an exhaustive restoration by his Highcroft Racing team (which went on to become a championship-winning ALMS program in partnership with Acura) in 1999, and the car and its owner have been a regular presence on the vintage racing scene since it was completed in 2000.
As the last car to produce an American F1 champion, keeping R4 in a museum might be a better choice for Dayton's investment, but as a hardcore racer, barnstorming vintage events with the Lotus 79-DFV is where he finds happiness. And as you'll hear, Dayton spends most of the session we captured drifting Andretti's world championship winner and says he loved every minute of it…
"I grew up driving my mom's Ford Grenada on the frozen lakes in Minnesota and seeing how long we could holds slides on the ice so oversteer doesn't bother me," he added. "The sanctioning body that runs the historic F1 cars requires us to run 40mm ride heights, and that takes away a lot of the downforce from our underwing.
"Otherwise, the ground effects cars would be massively faster than the non-ground effects cars. And on top of that, we missed the setup at Laguna and were sprung too heavily all the way around and that led to the dramatic oversteer and sounds."
Turning back to the R4's restoration, Duncan shared an R&T-related story of Andretti's initial reticence and eventual passion for the project.
"Mario's become a good pal but it took a little while," he said. "We restored the car in 1999, and in 2000, Road & Track and John Lamm were putting together a cover story about the United States Grand Prix going to Indy. They wanted to get the last American driver, Mario, and his world championship car, which I had, and put them together for a photo shoot at Watkins Glen which was the traditional home of the USGP for so many years.
"I'd met Mario a few times before, but we didn't know each other all that well, so we get to Watkins Glen, put Mario in the car, and I said to him 'this must be fun for you,' and he gave me a deadpan look and said 'this is a job.' It was obvious he wasn't very happy to be there. I'd found out the car's previous owner had asked him to drive the car before and the setup was so bad, he got out after one lap, so there was a bad precedent already for us.
"He was a bit grumpy until we showed him the original setup sheet from Watkins in 1978 that we used and then he started to smile."
The photo shoot, held after a long offseason, was meant to be conducted at modest speeds. With the proper setup on the car, Andretti took the opportunity to get properly acquainted with his old friend.
"We spent some time getting the car dialed in to his liking, and once he was happy with it, he starts winding it up and you can hear how fast he's going," Daytona continued. "The track hadn't been used in months, so it was dusty and dirty, and Mario goes barreling down into Turn 1 with the ground effect tunnels kicking up huge clouds and by that time, one of the track supervisors made a beeline for our pits and told us to shut it down."
"The track guy said 'You're going too fast for a photo shoot. You'd need to have an ambulance here for safety if something happens.' Mario said, 'then go get me an ambulance…'"
Andretti continued lapping once the ambulance arrived and thanked Dayton for the experience afterwards.
"He said, 'Man, this is so fun, it's like dancing with an old date.'"
As Dayton recalls, it wasn't the final dance for Mario Andretti and the Lotus 79 chassis R4.
"Then a few years later at Long Beach, we were doing parade laps with the historic F1 cars," he said. "It was meant to put former F1 drivers in some the cars to do slow laps-really, it was just so they could wave to the fans. I was there with the 79 to drive and then Mario comes up and says 'do you have a helmet I can use?'
"So I give him my helmet and he was fifth in line of all the historic cars ready to go out on these slow demonstration laps. The cars ahead of him pull out of the pits at idle speed waving to the fans, and then it's his turn. Mario lights it up, leaves the pits in a big sideways burnout, and does five laps at full speed. He comes in, tosses me the helmet, and says, 'what are they going to do, throw me out?'"
The joy of driving the Lotus 79-DFV comes through in the sounds of his performance at Laguna Seca, and Dayton readily admits he's living a dream with every lap.
"We jumped the fence and I was standing on the grid at Watkins Glen in 1978 and was next to Mario's left-front tire as he climbed into this car," he said. "At that time, I thought I'd have a better chance being an astronaut landing on the moon than one day owning that car and driving it, much less getting to know Mario Andretti and calling him a friend."
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