 Lotus introduced their ground breaking Lotus 79 and the M26 was immediately obsolete.Hunt tried too hard in several races making up for the performance deficit which led to race ending retirements, but the pure superiority of the Lotus caused his motivation to fall.Coppuck did an extensive redesign in the mid season, turning the M26 into a partial ground effect car, enlarging the sidepods for the ground effect venturis, redesigning the suspension and adding smaller wings front and rear, but there was no improvement in the cars' form and without a test driver to sort the cars' issues, the team's fortunes sunk even further.