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Lol hahha could have Schumacher using Horner at footwork lol.

Not really. Eric Broadley underestimated quite a lot of aspects of putting together a successful F1 team in the late 20th century. He had persuaded Mastercard that F1 participation would lead more people to apply for their credit cards. Unfortunately (for Lola), the sponsorship deal was structured so that, apart from a relatively modest amount of cash upfront, payments to Lola were based on the number of new Mastercard accounts signed up each month. Unfortunately, involvement with Lola proved less effective as a promotional tool than either party had hoped and the flow of cash was meagre.

It also didn't help that Mastercard insisted that Lola take part in the 1997 season - a year earlier than Eric Broadley had originally planned. Unsurprisingly, the V10 engines Broadley had commissioned Al Melling to design and build weren't ready for the start of the season so the Lola T97/30s turned up for the Australian Grand Prix with underpowered Ford Zetec-R V8s as well as a hopeless chassis. The cars were woefully slow (13 and 16 seconds slower than Jacques Villeneuve's pole time) and failed to qualify. That was that. The drivers turned up for the next race (Brazil) only to learn that the team had folded.

The lack of money from Mastercard meant that Lola could not pay Melling. He took legal action, which resulted in Lola Cars going into receivership, until it was rescued by Martin Birrane. A sorry story.

The bit in bold is the main problem there - the rest of the team could well have improved given the extra time and those V10s.

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Great review. Wasn't aware of some of that.

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I also have one of these.

This is what Eric Broadley said when the T97/30 was launched:

"We have the experience, the commitment and the desire to succeed in F1. We have knowledge from our composites shop, our engineers cross over from both programs and the wind tunnel work we have done at Cranfield with the Indycar is directly applicable to F1. We have basically worked at lightening components down to F1 needs. We have taken the best ideas from specialists in the wind tunnel, aerodynamics, vehicle dynamics and the like to produce the final machine."

He went on to predict that the car would score points in its first season and that Lola would win the World Championship within 4 years The reality was very different, the T97/30 chassis had some pretty fundamental flaws. It had been adapted from the T97/00 Indycar chassis without any further wind tunnel testing - and the T97/00 was one of Lola's poorer efforts. When the T97/00 was tested in the Williams wind tunnel towards the end of the 1997 CART season, the results revealed a calibration error in the Cranfield wind tunnel, which had been used by Lola for many years. The error was so great that, far from generating similar downforce to the rival Reynard 97I, the T97 produced much less. Even worse, the aerodynamic package was found to be unstable. The centre of pressure migrated along the underside of the car both under acceleration and braking and cornering and front and rear grip became unpredictable. These flaws were carried over into the F1 car so, even if the Al Melling V10 had been available, Lola would have struggled.

Ah, I take that back then, I was unaware of the wind tunnel issues. Not that they surprise me when I think about it, as you say the indycar chassis was hardly their best.

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