The "Tea Tray" March 711

A March 711 at a modern vintage race.  This is the "standard spec" car, as opposed to the one pictured below.

Love it or hate it.  Can't say I loved it, but I thought the 711 was an interesting car.  Not everyone agrees: I pulled a picture (not used here) from a web post about "the 10 ugliest Formula 1 cars of all time."  (From my viewpoint, the list of ugly F-1 cars has become quite long since the 1990's).  The 711 was successful, carrying Ronnie Peterson to second place in the 1971 World Championship, behind Jackie Stewart in his slope-nosed Tyrrell 003.

The 711 was designed by Frank Costin, noted for his low drag body designs in the 1950's and 1960's.  Colin Chapman recruited Costin from De Havilland Aircraft (on a consulting basis) to do the Lotus IX and Eleven.  Frank was the older brother of Mike Costin, the "Cos" in Cosworth Engineering.  The "worth" was Keith Duckworth.  Their most famous product (mostly Keith's) was the Cosworth-Ford V-8 Grand Prix engine, designed specifically for the Lotus 49 as a load-bearing chassis member.  It powered everybody but Ferrari in the late 1960's and early 1970's, and dominated GP and Indy car racing for 20 years.  But I digress...

After the Lotus Eleven, Frank went on to do the Vanwall GP car, a LeMans coupe for Maserati, and others.  The 711 was in that tradition.  Side radiators freed the front of the car for a low-drag solution, and Costin thought his was better than the Lotus 72's wedge shape with end-plated side wings, mounted lower.  The 711 turned out to be a blind alley in GP car development, but the aeronautically-oriented thinking was creative.

 Stripped down: a March 711 back-in-the-day, without fairings around the radiators or an air-intake box.