Stop everything: Ayrton Senna’s most successful Lotus F1 car could sell for £9m

Formula One’s turbo era reached its pinnacle in 1986, with ridiculously boosty, fire-spitting cars producing well over 1,000bhp in qualifying trim. And yet, somehow, they still managed to look absolutely fantastic. Anyone from contemporary F1 listening to this?

Perhaps the pick of the bunch visually in the ‘86 season was the John Player Special-liveried Lotus 98T, and now you can actually buy one.

Although this isn’t just any old Johnny Dumfries 98T chassis, this is 98T-3 – the most successful car driven by Ayrton Senna during his three-year stint with the team. Yikes.

The Brazilian took this car – complete with its bonkers 1.5-litre turbo V6 from Renault – to five pole positions, two wins and three further podiums in the first half of the season, with his victories coming in Spain and the United States as he battled with Mansell, Prost and Piquet.

There’s more good news for the well-heeled person that picks it up from the RM Sotheby’s sealed auction too, because it has just been through a “superlative restoration” at Lanzante, meaning it’s “primed and ready for a return to the track”. Oh boy.

Back in the day, the 98T was reported to make around 1,200bhp in its qualifying trim. There were no restrictions on power output, and the teams ran so much boost the turbochargers would last just a single lap. Heck, Lotus even used different gearboxes in quali to cope with the extra grunt. And even in its more reliable race trim the EF15B engine produced 900bhp and revved to 12,500rpm.

Want a taste of what Senna had to wrestle with? If the estimates are correct you’ll need somewhere in the region of £7m - £9m to find out.