Lola
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- For other meanings, see Lola (disambiguation)
Lola_logo.png
Lola logo
Lola Racing Cars (also Lola Cars International) is a racing car engineering company founded in 1961 by Eric Broadley and based in Huntingdon, United Kingdom. Lola is one of the best-known names in automobile racing. A subsidary of Lola is the rowing boat manufacturer Lola Aylings. Lola has been acquired by Martin Birrane in 1998 after the unsuccessful Lola Mastercard attempt at Formula 1.
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Formula One
Lola made its first foray into Formula One in 1962, supplying chassis to Reg Parnell's Bowmaker Yeoman Racing Team, with John Surtees as the driver. Success was immediate, with the car claiming a pole position in its very first race. Consistancy, however, was not to be found, and after only two seasons, Lola decided to abandon building Formula One cars for the time being.
From time to time thereafter, Lola continued to produce Formula One cars, but would not race under its own name for some time. Embassy, Haas, Larrousse, and Scuderia Italia all raced Lola-build chassis between 1974 and 1993, with little success, the best result being 3rd place for Aguri Suzuki in 1990. Despite this lack of performance, however, Lola was convinced in 1996 to produce a new car, this time for a team in its own name, to enter Formula One in 1998.
However, pressure from main sponsor MasterCard caused Lola to debut its new car one year early, in 1997. The results were disastrous, with the new Formula One car being no faster than Lola's Formula 3000 cars! After only one race the team was scrapped. Since that time Lola has shown no interest in entering Formula One yet again.
Formula Two / Formula 3000
After their limited success in the 1960s with Formula One, Lola turned its attentions to Formula Two, where Lola became the works team for BMW. As the years went on, Lola had considerably more success in Formula Two than it ever had in Formula One. When Formula Two became Formula 3000 in 1986, the cars became even more dominant, competing with Ralt and Reynard. Lola dominance became total in 1995, when International Formula 3000 became a one-make series. Lola was awarded the contract to build all Formula 3000 cars, a contract which has been renewed several times since. The sole holdout, Formula Nippon, ran mixed-grids of cars (with Reynard dominating) until 2003, when Lola was awarded that contract as well. In 2004, every Formula 3000-class car in the world, save one, was produced by Lola, but for 2005 Lola will be focusing on Formula Nippon, having lost the bid to build the new GP2 chassis.
Formula 5000 / CART / Champcars
In the 1970s, the Formula 5000 series was founded in North America, as a cheap, low-technology open-wheeled racing series to replace the powerful Can-Am sportscars of the 1960s. Lola entered this market as well, and quickly dominated the series, producing the bulk of Formula 5000 cars throughout the 1970s. This continued when the Can-Am series was recreated using Formula 5000 cars as the base...Lola made a seamless switch into sportscar racing, and won five consecutive Can-Am championships.
However, Can-Am was a fading series, which collapsed in 1986, which prompted Lola to move its focus to CART, along with the Indianapolis 500 in 1985. Once again, Lola showed its dominance of all motorsports outside of Formula One, pushing March right out of the series by 1990. But the rivalry between Lola and Reynard continued in America as well as the European F3000 series, as Reynard entered CART in 1992. Once again, Lola simply outlasted their rivals, and by 2003 were the only remaining manufacturer in the Champcar series.
Sports Cars / Formula 3
Lola was one of the top chassis suppliers in sports car racing in the 1960s. Various incarnations of the Lola T70 were used successfully all over the world from the World Endurance Championship to the Can-Am series, until 1973. As mentioned previously, Lola then dominated the Can-Am sportscar series when it was revived in the late 1970s, but many motorsports fans do not consider the single-seater cars from this era to be true sports cars, despite their enclosed wheel-wells. More recently, Lola has produced a fairly limited number of sports cars for Le Mans-style racing, where it has had limited success in the top class of the sport. In the second class (LMP2), Lola has had somewhat more success, including championship victories in the American Le Mans Series.
In Formula 3, Lola partners with Dome of Japan to produce a chassis since 2003. There they are competing with long-established Dallara, the two makers being among the last specialty race-car makers left in Europe. The partnership was broken for 2005, with Lola building their own chassis, which won its debut in the British series.
External links
- Lola Cars International (http://www.lola-group.com)de:Lola