Fittipaldi and the Black and Gold Lotus

Emerson Fittipaldi won five races in the Lotus 72 and became, at 25, the youngest world champion the sport had yet seen.

Lotus had slipped to fifth in 1971, but it kept refining the wedge shaped 72, now dressed in the black and gold of John Player Special, and in 1972 the car found its driver. Emerson Fittipaldi, the Brazilian who had won for the team at Watkins Glen two years earlier, turned it into a championship. It was also the first season in which every circuit on the calendar met the mandatory safety standards, a sentence that would have been hard to write a few years before.

The calendar

• Argentine Grand Prix, won by Jackie Stewart
• South African Grand Prix, won by Denny Hulme
• Spanish Grand Prix, won by Emerson Fittipaldi
• Monaco Grand Prix, won by Jean Pierre Beltoise
• Belgian Grand Prix, won by Emerson Fittipaldi
• French Grand Prix, won by Jackie Stewart
• British Grand Prix, won by Emerson Fittipaldi
• German Grand Prix, won by Jacky Ickx
• Austrian Grand Prix, won by Emerson Fittipaldi
• Italian Grand Prix, won by Emerson Fittipaldi
• Canadian Grand Prix, won by Jackie Stewart
• United States Grand Prix, won by Jackie Stewart