Lola's first flirtation with Formula 1 was early in the company's life when the Bowmaker Yeoman Team, run by the legendary Reg Parnell, approached Eric Broadley and asked him to design and build a Grand Prix Car for the 1962 season, the result was the Lola Mk4. The Mk4 was a conventional design by 1962 standards, it was based on the Mk3 Formula Junior car and comprised a spaceframe chassis with wishbone and radius rod based suspension front and rear and outboard springs and dampers. The car was initially fitted with a 4-cylinder Coventry Climax engine and a 5-speed Colotti gearbox, after a handful of races a V8 Climax was fitted. Drivers were the ex-motor bike World Champion John Surtees and the experienced Roy Salvadori. Results were mixed with Surtees winning the non-championship "2000 Guineas" at Mallory Park and leading for a long time at Reims in another non-championship race.

Unfortunately reliability problems ruined many Championship rounds, Surtees did take pole position for the Dutch GP at Zandvoort and took 2nds at Aintree for the British GP and the German GP on the mighty Nürburgring there was also a 4th at Monaco but otherwise the cars struggled. Continual changes were made during the season to the suspension and a 6-speed Colotti was tried. The modified version was named the Mk4a but sadly the design was overtaken by the opposition during the year. The cars continued into 1963 driven by Chris Amon and Mike Hailwood but they were no longer competitive.

It would be 1967 before Lola were involved in F1 and it wasn't with a Lola it was a Honda! John Surtees had been struggling with the overweight Honda RA273 all season and realising something needed to be done he approached Lola and a T90 USAC car was hastily modified to accept a Honda V12 via a tubular sub-frame and with revised suspension it immediately made its mark by winning the Italian GP and finishing 4th in Mexico. The car was officially the Honda 300, the Lola type number was the T130 but to all motor racing fans it will forever be the "Hondola". The 1968 Honda, a development of the RA300, was a combined effort between Lola's Eric Broadley, Honda's Yoshiro Nakamura, Derrick White and Surtees and to Lola it was the T180 but it raced as the Honda RA301, results were disappointing other than a 2nd in France and a 3rd in America.

Graham Hill bought Lola back into F1 in 1974 when following the setting up of his own team he was looking for a chassis to use until his own Hill chassis was ready. The T370 was a conventional mid-seventies Ford "kit-car" with its Ford DFV engine and Hewland gearbox, suspension was outboard all-round with wishbones at the front and a top link/twin lower links and twin radius rods at the rear. The cars were generally reliable but not too quick and team leader Graham Hill, arguably a couple of years past when he should have called it a day, was the only points scorer with a sixth at Sweden. Guy Edwards, Peter Gethin and Rolf Stommelen did not trouble the scorers.

The next F1 car to bear the Lola name wasn't really a Lola, in 1985 a new team entered Formula 1, sponsored by the Beatrice Corporation the cars were built by the FORCE team and run by Carl Haas. Eric Broadley was retained as a consultant although Neil Oatley, Ross Brawn and John Baldwin were the designers, the cars were called Beatrice-Lolas and bore the THL1 type number. Powered by a Hart turbo the car ran towards the end of 1985 and the beginning of 1986 and driven by Alan Jones and Patrick Tambay the cars were occasionally quick but unreliable. A Ford turbo-powered THL2 appeared partway through 1986 and was an improvement but under-powered and a fourth for Jones at Austria was the only significant result.