New: Lola Cars Retrospective by dr-baker

[Ataxia]

Dear forumites,

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Mastercard Lola's, erm, failure to qualify at Melbourne in 1997, the erudite dr-baker has crafted a great retrospective of Lola Cars' F1 efforts down the years. He's also admirably put up with my meddling, and so deserves double the amount of plaudits here!

You can read about Lola here, or meet her in a club in North Soho: http://gprejects.com/centrale/lola-cars-retrospective

[Wallio]

Well done lads. Baker may not be a doctor in real life, but he can surely earn an honorary doctorate after this effort. Most timely too.

[dr-baker]

You can read about Lola here, or meet her in a club in North Soho: http://gprejects.com/centrale/lola-cars-retrospective

Don't forget that she was a showgirl down at the Copacabana. Maybe that's why the team did not succeed in Brazil?

[Yannick]

Thank you for the overview of the long history of Lola Cars, Ltd., in and around F1.

A list of the drivers of Larrousse-Lola's drivers who scored the 10 mentioned 6th places would have been a worthy addition to the article, especially in case of the respective drivers' eligibility for a profile on the F1Rejects website.

Good for the company that they were more successful in other forms of motorsports.

[dr-baker]

A list of the drivers of Larrousse-Lola's drivers who scored the 10 mentioned 6th places would have been a worthy addition to the article, especially in case of the respective drivers' eligibility for a profile on the F1Rejects website.

For reference, these were Philippe Alliot (x4), Eric Bernard (x3) and Aguri Suzuki (x3). So clearly, they had all done enough individually to avoid reject status with these results alone, without taking other results into account. Reason for their omission was simply to avoid the article just turning into a list of names at various points.

Reference link.

[dinizintheoven]

They also submitted an application to rejoin F1 for the 2010 season but, much like their MasterCard transactions 13 years prior, this was declined.

Top banana. I'll be wishing I'd have thought of that line for years to come!

And while it's 20 years since Mastercard Lola failed to get on the grid at Melbourne, it's also (give or take a few months) 20 years since I left school. Back in those days, CDT students (I wasn't one) would occasionally be sent on a field trip to the Lola factory to get an idea of how racing cars are designed. How the mighty have fallen, and I wonder where those field trips go now? It would have to be within reasonable range of Bishop's Stortford and, likely as not, not an F1 team who wouldn't want to give away their secrets to some acne-riddled schoolkids, just in case one of them ends up with a job with a rival team a few years down the line.

[mario]

They also submitted an application to rejoin F1 for the 2010 season but, much like their MasterCard transactions 13 years prior, this was declined.

Top banana. I'll be wishing I'd have thought of that line for years to come!

And while it's 20 years since Mastercard Lola failed to get on the grid at Melbourne, it's also (give or take a few months) 20 years since I left school. Back in those days, CDT students (I wasn't one) would occasionally be sent on a field trip to the Lola factory to get an idea of how racing cars are designed. How the mighty have fallen, and I wonder where those field trips go now? It would have to be within reasonable range of Bishop's Stortford and, likely as not, not an F1 team who wouldn't want to give away their secrets to some acne-riddled schoolkids, just in case one of them ends up with a job with a rival team a few years down the line.

I believe that some teams do still run tours of their factories during the summer break period - I am fairly sure that, whilst they were still operating under the Lotus name, the team at Enstone was one of those teams, though I am not sure if they still do that after the takeover by Renault.

[SuzukiSwift]

Excellent article. I think the 1997 T97/30 project also did damage beyond F1; their initial version of Indycar chassis that year was absolutely horrendous (the T97/00) and nearly drove them out of the sport. They did eventually recover when Reynard decided to goof off with BAR and it compromised their CART effort.

[SuzukiSwift]

A list of the drivers of Larrousse-Lola's drivers who scored the 10 mentioned 6th places would have been a worthy addition to the article, especially in case of the respective drivers' eligibility for a profile on the F1Rejects website.

For reference, these were Philippe Alliot (x4), Eric Bernard (x3) and Aguri Suzuki (x3). So clearly, they had all done enough individually to avoid reject status with these results alone, without taking other results into account. Reason for their omission was simply to avoid the article just turning into a list of names at various points.

Reference link.

Suzuki and Bernard were good drivers but it's baffling that Philipe Alliot's career lasted as long as it did. Nice man though.