Lotus 49B Ford F-1

Here are some images of Tamiya's 1/12 scale Lotus 49B Ford F-1 racer.
This car was driven by Jochen Rindt 1969.

From Wikipedia"
The Lotus 49 was a Formula One racing car designed by Colin Chapman and Maurice Philippe for the 1967 F1 season. It was designed around the Cosworth DFV engine that would power most of the Formula One grid through the 1970s. It used its drivetrain as a stressed member, being not the first F1 car to do so but the first to apply the technique so well that everyone copied it.
Jim Clark won on the car's debut in 1967, and it would also provide him with the last win of his career in 1968. Graham Hill went on to win that year's title and the car continued winning races until 1970.

After a difficult first year for Lotus in the 3-litre formula, Chapman went back to the drawing board and came up with a design that was both back to basics, and a leap ahead. Taking inspiration from earlier designs, particularly the Lotus 43 and Lotus 38 Indycar, the 49 was the first F1 car to be powered by the Ford Cosworth DFV engine after Chapman convinced Ford to build an F1 power-plant.
The 49 was an advanced design in Formula 1 because of its chassis configuration. The specially-designed engine became a stress-bearing structural member (seen earlier with the H16 engine in the Lotus 43 and BRM P83, but prior to that in the front-engined Lancia D50 of 1954), bolted to the monocoque at one end and the suspension and gearbox at the other. Since then virtually all Formula 1 cars have been built this way.
The 49 was a testbed for several new pieces of racecar technology and presentation. Lotus was the first team to use aerofoil wings, which appeared partway through 1968. Originally these wings were bolted directly to the suspension and were supported by slender struts. The wings were mounted several feet above the chassis of the car for effective use in clean air, however after several breakages which led to near fatal accidents, the high wings were banned and Lotus was forced to mount the wings directly to the bodywork.
 n testing, Graham Hill found the Lotus 49 easy to drive and responsive, but the power of the Ford engine difficult to handle at first. The V8 would give sudden bursts of power that Hill had reservations about. However, Jim Clark won its debut race at Zandvoort with ease and took another 3 wins during the season, but early unreliability with the DFV ended his championship hopes. It had teething problems in its first race for Graham Hill, and it had spark plug trouble at the Belgian Grand Prix, held on the 8.76 mile (14.73 kilometer) Spa-Francorchamps. Jim Clark and Graham Hill fell victim to the reliability issues at the French Grand Prix, held at the Le Mans Bugatti Circuit (a smaller circuit using only part of the track used for the Le Mans 24 Hours), and lost to Jack Brabham. Jim Clark then ran out of fuel at Monza during the Italian Grand Prix. Mechanical failures cost Lotus the championship that year, but it was felt that 1968 would be a better year after Cosworth and Lotus perfected their designs, which were clearly the way forward.

Clark won the first race of the 1968 season, the South African Grand Prix and the Tasman Series in Australia, but was killed in an F2 race at Hockenheim. Graham Hill took over as team leader and won his second World Championship title, after clinching three Grand Prix wins - including the fourth of his five Monaco Grands Prix. Jo Siffert also drove a 49 owned by Rob Walker to win the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch that year, the last time a car entered by a genuine privateer won a championship Formula 1 race. The 49 also took Jochen Rindt to his first victory in 1969 at Watkins Glen, New York, before he drove the type to its last win in the 1970 Monaco Grand Prix.
The 49 was intended to be replaced by the Lotus 63 midway through 1969, but when that car proved to be a failure, an improved version of the 49, the 49C, was pressed into service until a suitable car could be built. The 49 took 12 wins, contributed to 2 driver and constructors' world championships, before it was replaced by the Lotus 72 during 1970. The final appearances of the 49C were in 1971, with Wilson Fittipaldi finishing ninth in the 1971 Argentine Grand Prix, and Tony Trimmer finishing sixth in the Spring Cup at Oulton Park.
Of the twelve 49s built only seven remain. Chassis R3 (driven by Graham Hill, then sold to privateer John Love) is the only example of the original 1967 cars still in existence, and is on display at the National Motor Museum in Hampshire.
From its introduction in 1967 works Lotus 49s were painted in Lotus's traditional British racing green with yellow centre-stripe. Over the following 16 months the design gained increasing numbers of sponsor patches and large driver name strips, while retaining the traditional base scheme. However, for the 1967-1968 Tasman Series races Team Lotus's 2.5 litre engined 49s were painted red, cream and gold — the colours of Gold Leaf cigarettes — after Chapman signed a lucrative sponsorship deal. This colour scheme was introduced for the 1968 World Championship at the second race of the season, in Spain.
Lotus 49s were also run by the privateer Rob Walker Racing Team, who painted their car in Walker's traditional dark blue with white nose band, and American Pete Lovely, whose car (chassis R11) was painted in the American national racing colours of white with a blue centre-stripe.


For the 1969 season, Rindt signed for the 1968 World Constructors' Champion Lotus, where he joined the defending Drivers' Champion Graham Hill. Rindt felt uncomfortable with the move, owing to the notorious unreliability of the Lotus car; in a twenty-month period between 1967 and 1969, the team was involved in 31 accidents. Hill alone had nine crashes between 1968 and 1970, which led him to joke: "Every time I am being overtaken by my own wheel, I know I am in a Lotus." When Rindt joined Lotus, his friend and de facto manager Bernie Ecclestone, who had negotiated the deal, remarked that they were aware that Brabham may have been a better choice of team but the speed of the Lotus gave Rindt a chance to win the championship. Rindt commented: "At Lotus, I can either be world champion or die." Because of his uncertainty about the wisdom of joining the team, Rindt did not sign the Lotus contract until shortly before the 1969 Spanish Grand Prix.

Rindt's hesitancy appeared justified when both he and Hill suffered high speed crashes at the Spanish Grand Prix at Montjuïc. In both instances, the suspension mounted wings on the cars broke off, causing accidents that could have killed either driver. The effect of the failure lifted Rindt's car off the track and into the barriers, where it collided with the stationary car of Hill, whose accident occurred at the same spot. Although Rindt only suffered a broken nose, one marshal lost an eye and another had his foot broken. Rindt was furious with Lotus's team owner, Colin Chapman, over the failure; he told a reporter after the accident: "I place the blame on him [Chapman] and rightfully so, because he should have calculated that the wing would break." In an interview on Austrian television a day later, he said: "These wings are insanity [ein Wahnsinn] in my eyes and should not be allowed on racing cars. [...] But to get any wisdom into Colin Chapman's head is impossible." Asked whether he had lost trust in Lotus after the accident, he replied: "I never had any trust in Lotus", going on to describe his relationship with the team as "purely business". His accident left him sidelined for the Monaco Grand Prix, a race that Hill won.
Jackie Stewart later described Rindt's 1969 season as the year that he "came of age". At the end of the year, Motor Sport magazine called him "[t]he only driver to challenge Stewart seriously throughout the season", albeit placing only fourth in the championship. The poor reliability of the Lotus 49B affected him; he retired from seven races. At the British Grand Prix, Rindt fought a close battle with Stewart for the lead; both men were 90 seconds ahead of third-placed Jacky Ickx. The race was decided in Stewart's favour only when Rindt had to enter the pits after part of his car's bodywork started to rub on the tyre; he finished fourth. Rindt recorded his maiden Grand Prix win at the penultimate race of the season at Watkins Glen, winning $50,000—the largest monetary prize in Formula One history at the time. His victory was overshadowed by a serious accident involving his teammate Hill, who crashed after a high speed puncture and suffered major leg injuries.