F1 2010's lost teams: Lola

In its 70 years spearheading the world of international motorsport, Formula 1's history is littered with seminal events, controversy and stories as-yet-untold. In those seven decades of history, its biggest names carry the most weight.

When the Lotus name returned to the grid in 2010, it bore the fortunes of the great Team Lotus marque on its shoulders, and optimistically carried a flat cap to throw in the air - in a manner akin to its founder Colin Chapman - in the event of victory. Sadly, that never came to pass.

But just as the Lotus team was admitted, at very short notice, to the 2010 grid as late as September 2009, it cemented the end of another great name's attempts to re-immerse itself in F1.

• F1 2010's lost teams
• Prodrive
• Epsilon Euskadi
  
• US F1
• Campos Meta 1

Founded in 1958 by Eric Broadley, Lola can trace its history in F1 back to 1962 when it supplied its Mk4 chassis to Reg Parnell's privateer team, which fielded British duo John Surtees and Roy Salvadori as its driving line-up. Having developed a relationship with Surtees in that time, Broadley returned to F1 to pen the works Honda team's RA300 chassis in 1967, beginning a course of sporadic involvement over the next few decades.

Lola designed cars for Graham Hill's eponymous team in the '70s, then Carl Haas' Beatrice-backed F1 project in the '80s before jumping ship to build the Larrousse team's chassis until 1990. An ill-fated year with Giuseppe Lucchini's Scuderia Italia team in 1993 ended with a short hiatus, before Lola attempted to make a go of it once more for the 1998 season - before title sponsor MasterCard insisted that the team fast-track its project for a 1997 entry, which ended abruptly having been 11 seconds off the pace in the Melbourne season opener.

Broadley then sold up to Irish property developer Martin Birrane, who focused the Lola Group's efforts into sportscars, the American CART series, and junior categories over the next decade.

Certainly, Lola's past endeavours in F1 were lacking the lustre of Lotus et al, but its time in the championship were worth more than a few cursory threads in Formula 1's rich tapestry. And when the opportunity came in 2009 for teams to join the F1 grid the following year with the promise of a £40m budget cap, Lola saw an opportunity to reignite its efforts at the top level of motorsport.

Unlike many of the start-up entries, Lola already had the infrastructure in place to field a Formula 1 entry. From its years developing chassis and products for the motorsport industry, Lola had a fully-functioning composites workshop and windtunnel, along with all the other kit needed to make a go of racing.

The birth of Lola's 2010 F1 project was entwined with both the extinct Super Aguri team and Ireland's A1GP project, another category which used Lola machinery before its ill-fated switch to the expensive Ferrari-designed machinery. The Irish team, led by Mark Gallagher, had won the 2008-09 edition of the series (its final season) with Ulsterman Adam Carroll behind the wheel.

"The chassis was going to be the MB-01, and we had a windtunnel model running under the guidance of the aero department. So [progress] was fairly advanced" Gerry Hughes

Gallagher had known Birrane for years, and was the first port of call for Lola to get its F1 ambitions off the ground. The two had previously worked in F1 in the '90s, when Gallagher was helping the Pacific team to keep its head above water, and had done a deal with Birrane to put money into Keith Wiggins' struggling team.

"We'd been talking about Formula 1 really ever since then," Gallagher says. "He didn't really have a business reason to do F1 - at that stage, it would have been more of a hobby decision and an expensive one at that.

"But what had changed in 2009 was that he'd owned Lola for effectively a decade, had all the facilities up there at Huntingdon and was employing quite a lot of people. He was realising that he needed to do something with Lola, and was very proud of that company.

"In terms of funding, Martin was prepared to put up all of the money necessary to fund the team in terms of its development in 2009, and the operation in 2010. He asked me to join him in the wake of my team winning the A1GP championship, where Gerry Hughes was my senior engineer."

Hughes came on board too as technical director, joining the former Super Aguri contingent along with team manager Daniele Audetto and designer Peter McCool. Although Lola already had plenty of personnel on board, Hughes and McCool set about recruiting extra heads with F1 experience to bring the project forward.

They'd also set to work on planning new facilities available at the Lola headquarters in Huntingdon. The design departments would be set up on the top floor and the race bays and sub-assembly workshops were drawn up for the bottom floor. With Lola's windtunnel facilities also available, it had even gone as far as designing and testing a model.

"The project was in full flow," Hughes recalls. "The chassis was going to be the MB-01, and we had a windtunnel model running under the guidance of the aero department for a period of time. I don't know how many hours and how many sessions we'd done, but we had a mock-up and we were looking at driver fits as part of that work. So [progress] was fairly advanced."

Technically, Lola had everything it needed to produce a Formula 1 car, and had a deal on the table to use the Cosworth engines that the FIA was keen for its new teams to use. Within the initial £40m cost cap, the Cosworths were the affordable option too and it had even courted F1 stalwart Williams, whose Toyota deal was due to expire an the end of 2009.

Hughes (below, with Takuma Sato in 2006) explains that Lola planned to "use a classic F1 start-up team approach", with a mixture of permanent employees, lean on Lola Cars and Lola Composites to provide their own insight, along with contractors. The McCool-led design was also going to be "conventional" to ensure Lola didn't design itself into a corner from which it couldn't develop its way out of.

"Peter had current experience," Hughes adds. "He'd been at Super Aguri until we effectively closed, and then he went back to doing contracting for McLaren, perhaps for Mercedes. You know, he's a very well-known designer in those circles. What you don't do is try and do something which is so innovative that you're likely to set yourself up for failure. So it was probably a fairly conventional, by those standards, car at that time.

"[It would have been a] sensible approach, not taking any big risks on the basis that clearly the future of the project would depend upon it. The development of that car during the course of the season would have been important for us to create a steady foundation, a solid foundation for us to move forward."

Although Birrane was happy to put his own money into the team, part of the FIA's entry criteria was to demonstrate that the team could be self-sufficient. Gallagher, a veteran of pulling together sponsorship deals with Jordan, knew that the most sure-fire route to securing a budget was to ask drivers to bring one.

Even after the £40m cost cap fell by the wayside, Lola figured that it could afford to operate on about £50m in 2010, and Gallagher estimates that "between 10 and 20%" could come from the drivers.

"Some drivers do bring a huge amount of money," Gallagher explains, "and we were pretty unashamedly going to up into the paid driver market simply because it was a prudent thing to do to get the team off the ground, at least for the first few years.

Lola had everything it needed to produce a Formula 1 car, and had a deal on the table to use the Cosworth engines that the FIA was keen for its new teams to use

"During my time at Jordan, drivers - including Rubens Barrichello - had brought substantial funding with them. Even though externally Rubens is perceived as being a talent throughout his career, the fact remains that he wouldn't have been signed for Jordan if he hadn't brought funding with him. So there's lots of precedent in my mind of deals to be done."

Word around the paddock was that Carroll, having enjoyed success with Gallagher and Hughes in A1GP, was to be one of the drivers and would make his F1 debut after two-and-a-bit years in GP2. Depending on who you ask, Sato was set to be the other; although the rumour was denied by his camp, Carroll himself suggests that the two were in line to form Lola's 2010 line-up.

Ex-BAR and Super Aguri driver Sato was on the F1 sidelines after failing to upstage Sebastien Bourdais for a Toro Rosso berth, and his experience would have made a good fit for one of the prospective entrants.

"Mark and I had a good relationship," Carroll recalls. "During that A1 time, Formula 1 was something that was talked about and Mark would have been somebody who could have managed me or helped me into the positions. There was more than one, it wasn't just Lola. But Lola was the main team that you would have felt I could have done a good job.

"My understanding was they had the money you had to show as a new team that you could do three seasons. My understanding was Lola was one of the teams that was in that position, so that was encouraging. They already had a windtunnel car made and everything. I think it was going to be Takuma Sato and me.

"Takuma was just one of the other drivers that had experience at the time and I would hopefully have come in."

But Gallagher stresses that the team's focus on getting two pay-drivers to form the line-up may have counted against Carroll, who had barely had any backing.

"I would have been delighted, absolutely overjoyed to bring Adam across to the Lola F1 programme but there was no point in me saying, 'Martin, I can get you pay drivers with a lot of money' and then 'by the way, can we sign Adam Carroll?' because Adam didn't have any money to bring.

Have a go hero: How a World Cup winner's IndyCar dream went awry

"It was a romantic plan. I think that we probably had talked once or twice over a beer to think about how could we get Adam into the team. But realistically, that wasn't gonna happen. It was gonna be either an existing driver in Formula 1 who had funding and wanted to come to us or it was going to be a new driver coming into F1."

Talking to those involved at Lola, there still appears to be some surprise a decade later that the team hadn't managed to secure an F1 entry in 2010 - especially when compared to the teams who did. The team had Birrane's backing and there were drivers with budget on the market, while there was also a fully functioning facility to boot. The FIA box-tick of a Cosworth engine was secured, and the right figures were in place to lead the team.

So why didn't Lola make the cut?

Gallagher and Hughes have differing theories. The entry processes went to a tribunal of ex-Jaguar chief Tony Purnell and figures from Deloitte who were in control of checking the financial plans. Lola was questioned on its pay-driver plans, which Gallagher feels partially counted against the team.

"What it absolutely, clearly did for me was to show that the people in charge of the decision had no idea," he says. "They had this pie-in-the-sky idea that a new team was going to come in with full funding and sponsorship, and that was going to be the criteria.

"I remember saying to Martin very clearly, 'no one is going to have that'. We had to be realistic. So we're coming in with a very transparent business plan, which is practical. And it's pragmatic, it's real. And it's real because I've been there. I've done it in Formula 1."

"We were pretty unashamedly going to up into the paid driver market simply because it was a prudent thing to do to get the team off the ground" Mark Gallagher

Furthermore, having worked with FIA president Max Mosley and F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone before, Birrane knew the two well. Birrane was a huge fan of the budget cap proposal and was less enamoured with the FIA's eventual decision to drop it, also dropping the performance advantages that the new teams would receive in recompense.

"The second thing, ironically," Gallagher says, "was Martin knew Bernie and Max. I think that went against Lola because during the tender process in the months leading up to June of 2009, Martin would have spoken to Max and Bernie - and Martin could be quite robust in his approach to things.

"I remember Martin was furious about the fact that he was prepared to commit a lot of money to building a Formula 1 team and the goalposts were not just being moved, they were been moved onto a new pitch every so often.

"He began to realise what will essentially happen is that these small Formula 1 teams allowed to come in on a budget cap would actually end up having to fight on level terms with [the top teams]. And that was not what Martin wanted to do. He loved Max's original idea, which was new teams operating on a strict budget cap with performance benefits and shared components from the top teams too. He loved that idea.

"Do I think that went against him? I think possibly it did not because Max and Bernie were being difficult with Martin but possibly because they realised he might be a difficult guy to let into Formula 1."

Hughes, meanwhile, suggests that Birrane might have voiced some concerns to Ecclestone during the tender process - particularly as the cost caps began to increase.

"Martin had a good relationship with Bernie," Hughes explains. "And I was always of the opinion that perhaps Bernie had said to Martin, taking him to one side and saying 'do you really want to do this, on the basis that the £30m cost cap's gone out the window and the £40m cost cap's likely to go out the window? Do you really want to put everything on the line?

"I don't know, I think the truth will never really come out now because Martin is no longer with us."

Whatever the true reason for Lola's failed entry, those involved feel that the team could have made a proper go of F1, and at the very least could have transcended the other new entries on the grid with the benefit of its existing infrastructure.

"I think they would have done an excellent job," Carroll says. "They would have produced a very good car and it would have been a classic car, designed in the wind-tunnel and done properly.

"Lola could have bridged that [midfield to tail-end] gap, they could have put something together that would have given guys a chance to show the midfield teams that they can do it like the way Minardi used to work, and not literally been five or six seconds off the back the entire time driving around just to be a Formula 1 driver."

After its failed F1 foray, the Lola Cars business went bust in 2012, with various motorsport figures swooping in to scoop up the remaining assets at the end of the company's life. Birrane sadly passed away at the age of 82 in 2018, having never managed to realise his F1 dream.

It was a travesty that Lola never managed to receive the green light from the FIA, but the next team we'll explore did - but its entry never saw the light of day.