Team story
Origins
Eric Broadley built Lola’s success by selling racing cars for different categories. Its Formula 1 debut came in 1962: the Mk 4 was run by Reg Parnell’s Bowmaker team, with John Surtees and Roy Salvadori. Surtees immediately took pole at Zandvoort and two second places during the season, showing that a chassis manufacturer could find customers at the highest level too.
The Formula 1 journey
Lola’s presence was not that of a single, continuously active team. It encompassed Graham Hill’s programmes, the Lola-named cars of the 1980s Haas team, chassis for Larrousse and Scuderia Italia’s T93/30. Aguri Suzuki took a Lola to the podium at Suzuka in 1990.
The marque’s final starts in the archive date to 1993, not to the 1997 MasterCard attempt.
Historical timeline
Three chapters in the story of Lola
Three episodes to revisit the people, cars and races that shaped this journey.
First appearance · Dutch Grand Prix
Roy Salvadori · Dutch Grand Prix 1962. The recorded outcome is DNF. This is the first recorded race start, or the first entry if the team never started a race.
Sporting landmark · British Grand Prix
John Surtees · British Grand Prix 1962. The recorded position is P2; this number alone does not show whether the driver completed the race distance. This marks the first win or podium where one exists, otherwise the highest recorded placing for this constructor.
Latest recorded appearance · Portuguese Grand Prix
Michele Alboreto · Portuguese Grand Prix 1993. The recorded outcome is DNF. This is the last race start attributed to this constructor in the archive, not necessarily the end of the organisation behind it.
A distinctive way of racing
The builder, the financier and the entrant need to be distinguished. The Lola name brings together different industrial relationships, while a model designation does not count how many examples were made. In 1997 Broadley instead attempted a programme directly associated with the marque: the T97/30 was prepared in a very short time, bringing forward the originally planned entry by a year.
What remains
Vincenzo Sospiri and Ricardo Rosset failed to qualify at Melbourne in 1997. The commercial mechanism behind MasterCard’s sponsorship did not provide the necessary resources, and the project stopped. The crisis led to Martin Birrane’s intervention.
That failure does not define all of Lola: its work in junior formulae, American racing and prototypes extended far beyond its participation in Grands Prix.
