MAY 11, 2006

Lola and Formula 1

There are stories knocking around that Lola might want to get back into the business of building Formula 1 chassis for teams in the brave new world of F1 in 2008. This is a nice idea but not thought very likely to happen. Customer chassis building companies have generally not done well in F1 where every tiny detail is hugely important. The last attempt by Lola to make it in Formula 1 led to the collapse of the company in 1997. Lola owner Martin Birrane has been carefully rebuilding the company ever since and while he would surely not make the same mistakes that were made 10 years ago, it is hard to imagine that any of the teams would want to enter into such an arrangement as there are still only going to be 12 teams. It might be a pitch to try to convince Prodrive to do business with Lola.