The story of the Lotus 107 is closely tied to that of the Leyton House CG911 from 1991. The design of the 107 is officially attributed to engineer Chris Murphy, who worked under the technical direction of Peter Wright, but it is in fact heavily borrowed from the Leyton House CG911 of '91, largely designed by technical director Gustav Brunner. The design transfer happened when, following the dissolution of the Leyton House Racing team after owner Akira Akagi's arrest in the Fuji Bank scandal in September 1991, the technical staff of the Anglo-Japanese team moved en masse to Team Lotus, everyone except Gustav Brunner, who chose to join Giancarlo Minardi's team in Faenza, Italy.
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| LOTUS 107, Johnny Herbert Montréal, Canadian GP 1992 |
In the summer of '91, despite the imminent financial collapse of the Leyton House group, Chris Murphy was already working on the development of the CG911, and it seems that a car, unofficially referred to as the CG921, had been prepared for initial wind tunnel testing. However, since it was never officially assembled, the entire project remained in Murphy’s hands and followed him to Lotus. What was intended to be the Leyton House car for the 1992 season thus became the new Lotus 107. Naturally, all the technical work done by Murphy’s team while still based in Bicester couldn't be salvaged after the move to Lotus, and as a result, the new 107 wasn’t ready for the season opener in South Africa.
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| LOTUS 107, Mika Häkkinen Spa-Francorchamps, Belgian GP 1992 |
For the first races of the season, the Norfolk team had to rely on the old 102, upgraded to the “D” version and already at the limit of its development, as it dated back to the 1990 season. This car was driven by young British driver Johnny Herbert and Finnish rookie Mika Häkkinen. From this season, the car featured the Ford-Cosworth HBA V8 engine updated to spec 3, similar but less recent than the spec 5 used exclusively by Briatore’s Benetton team. It wasn’t until mid-May, during the San Marino Grand Prix, the fifth round of the season, that the new 107 was finally ready to hit the track, albeit with only one car assigned to Herbert.
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| LOTUS 107, Johnny Herbert Suzuka, Japanese GP 1992 |
From the following race, Häkkinen also had access to the new car, a solid vehicle that gave Team Lotus its last glimpses of competitiveness before shutting down for good at the end of 1994. The new 107 had sleek, flowing lines, very different from the old 102, and closely resembled Brunner’s CG911, so much so that cynics dubbed it “a Leyton House painted green and yellow.” The differences were mostly at the rear, where the engine cover was bulkier and the sidepods less tapered. The slightly raised nose and central ridge on the front wing closely mirrored the CG911’s shape. The 107 was also the first Lotus equipped with a semi-automatic gearbox, a six-speed unit supplied, like Footwork’s, by British manufacturer Xtrac, as well as an electronic suspension system originally designed over ten years earlier by the late Colin Chapman and his right-hand man Martin Ogilvie, and continuously developed since.
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| LOTUS 107, Mika Häkkinen Magny-Cours, French GP 1992 |
The car showed promising performance but was very sensitive to setup changes, making it difficult for the young, inexperienced drivers to find its limits. Nevertheless, the Lotus 107 achieved some good results, with both drivers managing to keep up with the front-runners in many races, at least in the early stages. Häkkinen in particular finished in the points in every race he completed, except for the Australian Grand Prix where he came seventh, highlighting reliability as the car’s main issue. Herbert’s season was much more disappointing, plagued by mechanical failures and with only one points finish, in France where he placed sixth. During the 1992 season, the 107 scored 11 points, which, combined with the 2 points earned at the beginning of the season with the old 102D, earned the team fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
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