Lotus F1 car in Iron Man 2

Movie fans have been pouring into the theaters this weekend to watch Iron Man 2, the sequel to the 2008 hit about the Marvels mechanized super Hero. In the movie, the first meeting between Iron Man and Whiplash occurs during the Historic Grand Prix of Monaco which is a real annual event for historic F1 and F3 cars and is held 2 weeks before the Monaco Grand Prix.

Now the more more eagle eyed motorsport fans would have seen that P3 was listed “Locke” with “Chapman” in P2 plus one car on the grid looked suspiciously like a JPS liveried Lotus. At this point I contacted GGLC member and Historic Grand Prix racer, Chris Locke to see if he was associated with the movie and and he referred me to this blog post which explains how the movie producers borrowed his fantastic Lotus 77 for the movie along with 5 other historic grand prix cars.

caption="Image by Jerry Garrett"
Lotus 77 on the start line. Image by Jerry Garrett

The actual race scenes were shot in a giant green screen in Downey Studios with the 6 real cars and 19 other additional cars that were built based on the design of the 1978 Wolf F1 car. In the photo above you can see the Lotus 77 on the right of the grid. Only 2 of the faux F1 cars actually ran and most of the on track action was created using CGI to insert the cars. The actual confrontation scene was shot on the set using one of the running cars and a lot of pyrotechnic explosions. The photo below shows the Chris (left) hanging out on set after the scenes had been filmed.

Image by Jerry Garrett
Chris Locke and James King on set. Image by Jerry Garrett

For more info on Chris Locke and his historic racing check out his website at Checkered Past Racing and also drop by the Historic Grand Prix website. If you who haven’t seen Iron Man 2 yet, I highly recommend watching it and don’t forget to keep your eyed peeled for the Lotus (2:03 mark in the trailer below).

[via Jerry Garrett]

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