Revolution road

I am one of a generation blessed to have been brought up in an age of damn cool Formula 1 cars. Actually my ‘window’ as I like to think of it is quite narrow, opening at the age of 10 in 1975 with airbox cars, whose snorkels made them the most distinctive of all Grand Prix racers.

We all had our favourites: some preferred the slender elegance of the Ferrari 312T’s overhead apparatus, others the more muscular approach of McLaren’s M23 and the similar design of the Motul-sponsored BRMs. I always thought the Lotus 72’s was the most elegant and I’m still amazed that aerodynamic understanding was so limited as to allow such a diverse array of possible solutions to the same problem, but I’m digressing even before my second paragraph is spent. My window slammed shut in the early Eighties when ground effect and turbochargers came to spoil the way the cars looked, sounded and drove.