These are Joe Leonard's #60 STP team car markings, but Lotus also ran the similar, turbine powered, 4 wheel drive, model 56B in Formula 1, in 1971. STP's Andy Granatelli had racing in his blood, and commissioned two, different, competitive, turbine-powered cars for the Indianapolis 500 in 1967 and 1968. Engines were Pratt & Whitney units typically used in light aircraft.
In the actual races, both the 1967 Paxton car and Joe Leonard's 1968 Lotus ran many laps in the lead, and both were stopped by catestrophic failures of relatively insignificant parts. Granatelli chose a conventional, piston engined, deisgn for 1969, and finally got his team to Victory Lane.
STP entered 3 cars for 1968, Joe Leonard's #60, Graham Hill's #70 and Art Pollard's #20. Hill's drive ended on lap 110 with a crash on Turn 2. Leonard's car went silent and coasted to a stop when the race was restarted, from cruising under Caution, on lap 191. Seconds later, Pollard's car, 3 laps behnd suffered the same fuel shaft failure. Leonard was classified 12th, Pollard 13th and Hill 19th, one place better than A.J. Foyt.
Lotus's 1971 effort was serious, but Future Formula 1 and Indy superstar Emerson Fittipaldi's best finish was 8th overall, at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza. He'd already won a Formula 1 race, on his 5th try, so the problem was with the car, not the driver. He worn the World Championship for himself and Lotus in 1972, and again in 1974, after moving to McLaren. In later years, he won the Indianapolis 500 in 1989 and 1993.
Lotus had presumably spent 1969-1970 trying to improve turbine throttle response, and 8th at Monza was no small feat. But other than Indianapolis, the internal combustion gas turbine wasn't an inevitable success as motive power for surface vehicles driven by wheels.
Using a turbo-compressor with a piston engine for both combustion and to extract power to drive the wheels proved to be far more successful. Also dramatically more fuel efficient and easily applied to purely civil street vehicles.
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