Lotus won 8 races out of 16, and the world title went to Mario Andretti.
In 1978 the ground-effect Lotus — first the 78 and then, from the Belgian Grand Prix, the Lotus 79 — outclassed all its rivals: Mario Andretti won six races, his team-mate Ronnie Peterson two, and Lotus finished one-two more than once.
Andretti became champion at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where Peterson was seriously injured in a crash at the start and died in hospital the next day; he was posthumously classified second in the championship. The last race of the season, in Canada, was won by Gilles Villeneuve — the first win of his career.
Written from the facts · checked by our editors