Lola's first foray into Formula 2 was in 1964 when the new Formula 2 regulations came into force which meant that all the constructors were starting from a level playing field, design a chassis, buy a 1-litre Cosworth SCA engine and a Hewland 5-speed gearbox and you were ready to race.
Lola's first Formula 2 design was also one of their most successful in this class, the 1964 T54, it was effectively a Mk5A F Junior chassis with an SCA engine, driven by Dick Attwood it took second to Jim Clark's Lotus on its debut at Pau. This was swiftly followed by a win at Aspern and another second at the Nürburgring but as the new Lotus and Brabham designs came on song the T54 slipped back. Appearing later in the season the T55 showed no great improvement in form, although Attwood took second at Albi towards the end of the year and Tony Maggs took third in September at Snetterton.
The monocoque T60 was the 1965 offering and some more promising results were achieved during the year with Dick Attwood and Tony Maggs taking a 1-2 at the Rome GP and Chris Amon and John Surtees weighing in with wins at Solitude and Oulton Park. Another good result was Dick Attwood's runner up slot for the second year running at Pau.
1966 saw an updated T60 on offer, the T61, the season was dominated by the all-conquering Brabham-Hondas and the T61 saw very little success with only a fourth for David Hobb's at Barcelona to lighten the gloom. The other Midland Racing Partnership drivers, Dick Attwood and Frank Gardner managed the odd fifth and sixth places during the year. John Surtees debuted the new T62 at Karlskoga towards the end of the season and ran as high as third before a broken doughnut put him out.
BMW commissioned a chassis for the 1967 season to take their Apfelbeck-designed engine which featured radially-positioned valves, and these cars were always entered as BMWs although to everyone else the were the Lola T100. The BMW cars were largely unsuccessful, the engine was down on power compared with the Cosworth FVA, it was unreliable and the engine was physically tall and heavy which did not help with the handling. The BMW drivers were Hubert Hahne and Jo Siffert and over the season the only top six result was a fourth at the Eifelrennen for Hahne. John Surtees bought a pair of T100s for his own team and tried both the BMW and Cosworth engines, his team mate Chris Irwin found himself with the BMW-powered car whilst Surtees himself generally used a FVA. Surtees choice proved the right one and he steered his T100 to victory at both Mallory Park and Zolder, where he defeated Jim Clark, he did take a second at the Eifelrennen with the BMW-engined car showing that perhaps the Apfelbeck engine could be successful with the right driver.
Team Surtees continued with the T100 in 1968 whilst a new T102 was developed for BMW , this was essentially a T100 with a rear subframe added that would accept the new 4-valve 1600cc BMW engine that replaced the Apfelbeck. Jo Siffert led at Hockenheim and finished fourth at Albi with the T102 but Hahne never seemed to get on with the new design. Before his terrible career-ending sports car accident in the Ford 3L at the Nürburgring Chris Irwin took a win at the Eifelrennen in the Team Surtees T100 FVA but the couple of other T100s that appeared achieved little.
Lola took a three year sabbatical from Formula 2 returning for the final year of the 1600cc regulations in 1971. The new chassis was the T240 a small, distinctive design with it's low slab-sided fuel tanks, front suspension was by double wishbones whilst at the rear it was reversed lower wishbones and twin radius rods, but unfortunately no serious development work was carried out.
The car was entered by Jo Bonnier and the only result of note was a sixth for Helmut Marko at the Nürburgring. For 1972 a revised T242 was planned but in the event it only raced in Formula B in North America.
In 1975 American Ted Wentz was racing a Formula Atlantic T360 in the UK and he converted his chassis to F2 by adding the required deformable structure and fitting a Swindon Ford BDG. The car was renamed a T360B and entered in the Thruxton and Silverstone rounds of the European Championship without worrying the usual runners.
1976 saw a semi-serious return to Formula 2 for Lola with the T450 which consisted of a conventional monocoque with a tubular engine subframe to take the BMW or Ford engine, suspension was narrow track and outboard. With no major teams or drivers, except arguably Mikko Kozarowitzky and Ian Ashley (who tried the BDX version), running the T450 results were poor with a number of non-qualifications. Roland Binder updated a car to a T450/460 (the T460 was the 1976 F Atlantic car) for two races in 1977.
The T550 was introduced in 1977, it was a much lightened version (by some 130lbs - 59kgs) of the T450, it was powered by Holbay-tuned Abarth engine. Roberto Marazzi had a single outing at Silverstone but failed to qualify. In addition Alo Lawler fitted a Swindon Ford BDX to his T462 F Atlantic car and tried the two UK rounds but non-started at Silverstone and non-qualified at Donington.
Unusually for 1981 Lola became involved with another company's design when they took on production of the Toleman TG280 which had been designed by Rory Byrne and John Gentry, it had largely dominated the 1980 Formula 2 season and for 1981 Lola offered a nearly identical copy, to Lola it was the T850. Unfortunately the works Docking-Spitzley Team only sorted out (inadequate) sponsorship at the last minute and as a result only received their cars 5 days before the first race. The delays and lack of sufficient finance put the team on the back foot all year but despite this Stefan Johansson won two races at Hockenheim and Mantorp Park and had a second at Vallelunga to finish 4th in the European Championship. Lola built no more Formula 2 cars and indeed Formula 2 was replaced by the newly introduced F3000 in 1985, a formula in which Lola would have some success.
For a company whose raison d’etre was building customer cars Lola and Formula 3 were for many years very uneasy bedfellows. Despite the huge popularity of the class over the last 50 years F3 was never seen as a very high priority and it showed in Lola’s lack of any real success for many years.
For a company whose raison d’etre was building customer cars Lola and Formula 3 were for many years very uneasy bedfellows. Despite the huge popularity of the class over the last 50 years F3 was never seen as a very high priority and it showed in Lola’s lack of any real success for many years.
The first F3 Lola was the 1964 T53 which was a converted F Junior Mk5A, only a single car was built and not surprisingly perhaps no significant results were achieved. 1966 saw Lola’s first F3 win when Mike Beckwith took the T60 (a dual F2/F3 design) to victory at Monza in the XV Trofeo Bruno e Fofi Vigorelli. However rather than being a spur to Lola it seemed as if success in other forms of racing, notably Sports Cars with the T70 and Indianapolis with the T90 pushed F3 into the doldrums and a lack of development soon saw the chassis lose its competitive edge. For the next few years Lola announced F3 designs but a lack of interest from customers meant that none of the cars were ever raced or often even built.
It would be 1975 before a new F3 Lola appeared, the T350, however it was not a success only appearing for one race where it failed to start. Things did not improve noticeably over the next few years, despite the best efforts of famed Lola development driver Mike Blanchett and Nigel Mansell, with Birmingham’s finest managing a best of 4th at Silverstone at the end of 1977 in his T570. 1978 wasn’t much better with Mike Blanchett and Arie Luyendijk managing a few top six finishes in the T670 which was derived from the T570.
To emphasise Lola’s apparent confusion no less than two designs were tried in 1979, the T672 (a revised T670) and the ground-effect T770. It made no difference, the T672 wasn’t competitive against the ground-effect March and Ralt and the T770 just didn’t work. However Mike Blanchett extensively tested the T770 during the off-season and it became the T770/2 in 1980 and suddenly Lola were back on the pace with Blanchett taking an early season 2nd and 3rd. Unfortunately the team running the T770/2 hit financial problems and only a few more races were undertaken.
1980 saw the end of Lola’s F3 participation until the end of 2002 when Lola in collaboration with noted Japanese manufacturer Dome produced the F106/03 which was immediately on the testing pace against the previously all-conquering Dallaras. In Japan there were two victories in the 2003 All Japan Championship whilst in the UK Adam Carroll had some promising runs in his F106/03. Things were even better in 2004 with Brazilian Joao Paulo de Oliveira taking second in the standings in the Japanese Championship with six victories and Danny Watts winning a round of the British Championship with the F106/04, the first non-Dallara victory in the UK for 11 years.
Success continued into 2005 with Danilo Durani winning two British F3 Championship rounds and Stephen Kane one in their Lola B05/30 Mugen Hondas. In 2006 Ho-Pin Tung won the very competitive German F3 Recaro Cupin the Lola B06/30 Opel-Spiess which dominated the season but once again other classes of racing took greater priority and Lola once again faded from F3.