Lola and Its Formula 1 Attempt: When Years of Know How Meant Nothing

By
at Internationaled.org

Published: February 6, 2011

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The Lola group has been involved in Formula 1 in some form or another many times. On many of these occasions, they were constructing cars for other people to use. All of the cars they built for other people were never particularly strong.

In 1995, a prototype was built and Allan Mcnish was used as a driver.

In 1996, after years of providing cars for other people, Lola decided to have a full works attempt at Formula 1. They managed to secure a sponsorship coup getting Mastercard to sponsor their team. Mastercard put $35 million into the team, which despite not being a huge amount by Formula 1 standards, was enough to allow the team to begin work on a car.

The deal with Mastercard is unlike most sponsorship deals I have ever heard about. The amount of money coming in depended on the amount of people the Lola team could bring into the Mastercard credit card group.

The schedule for construction was designed for the car to be ready for the 1998 Formula 1 season. They secured a deal to run Ford Zetec-R V8 engines which Sauber used in 1995. So the engines they had were old, had two less cylinders than every other teams motor (except Minardi) and were down on power.

It wasn't the most promising of starts, Then Mastercard decided they wanted the team to enter in the 1997 season, in other words throwing all the Lola plans totally out of the window. Somehow they designed a car called the T97/30. Meanwhile, they were designing their car the Stewart team were unveiling theirs and were beginning their testing programme.

Whilst making the T97/30 they said they were using their knowledge of composites to build the car. What they actually did was use parts from their other racing cars and try to lighten them to make the useable in Formula 1.

The Lola team proudly said that the team had done "wind tunnel work we ...
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Formula 1

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