Lola battles with factory cars

The striking B2K/10 shone in the hands of Didier de Radigues and Mimmo Schiaterella (pictured) at Charlotte, the first ALMS sprint race of the season, taking third on the grid and in the race.

Despite beating all of the works machines bar the lead BMW and Panoz entries, Team Rafanelli, which runs the machine, believes it could have done even better - the car was on track for second place a slow puncture intervened - even so, Didier de Radigues was able to hold off Auberlan in the second BMW.

The car is the first off the production line, and still less than two months old, as Lola's head of global sales and marketing Keith Wiggins acknowledged:

"We are very happy that the car has shown this sort of very competitive speed and performance against the works teams so soon after its launch.

"We, and Team Rafanelli, are still very much in the early stages of developing the car's potential, in terms of set-up, but this result is very encouraging for the future performance of the B2K/10," The former Pacific F1 team boss added.

Lola's SR1 class racer costs just over half a million dollars, in line with the rules of the Sports World Racing Cup series, in which the Lola will also compete in 2000. It has to compete with the multi-million dollar factory campaigns of the Audi, Panoz and BMW teams.