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His 1982 highlight was a dramatic victory in the Austrian GP, de Angelis beating the Williams of Keke Rosberg by 0.05s to give Lotus its first win for four years. Nigel Mansell joined full-time in 1981 and the Italian finished ahead of the Englishman that year and the next. The 81 was not one of Lotus’s best, but de Angelis did outscore 1978 world champion Mario Andretti in the points table. If you’d also like to see which Lotus F1 cars we thought were best, take a look at our top 10 Lotus F1 cars list.Įlio de Angelis, Lotus, 1983 San Marino GPĪfter a year with the struggling Shadow team, de Angelis joined Lotus for 1980 and took a second place in the Brazilian GP, round two of the campaign.
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We didn’t include their achievements at other teams and have excluded the ‘Lotus’ era at the Enstone team, which later became Renault/ Alpine. We’ve considered the amount of success the drivers scored with Lotus, the impact they had on the team and the circumstances of their time there. That made producing this list tricky, but here’s our pick of the top 10 Lotus F1 drivers. Many great drivers raced Lotus machinery between its F1 arrival in 1958 and Team Lotus folding in 1994.
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