Lola Cars

Lola Cars Limited
Background
Based	Huntingdon, England, UK
Founded	1958 (Relaunched 2024)
Founder	Unknown
Key People	Till Bechtolsheimer (Chairman)
Industry	Motorsport
Formula E Record
Début	2024/25 São Paulo E-Prix
Total Entries	0 (0 Starts)
Wins	Poles	FLs
0	0	0
Total Points	0
Former Team(s)	Unknown
Current Season
Team(s)	Lola Yamaha ABT Formula E Team
Car	TBA

Lola Cars Limited, otherwise known as Lola, is a British motorsport manufacturer that competes as a manufacturer in the 2024/25 ABB FIA FIA Formula E World Championship with ABT Sportsline. Partnering with Yamaha to build their maiden FE car, Lola would announce their entry into FE ahead of the start of the Gen 3 Evo era, before later committing to compete through to the end of the Generation 4 period as well.

Background

Lola had originally been founded as an element of Lola Group in 1958 when Eric Broadley sought to build and race cars, initially contructing a sportscar to race in endurance series. In the 1960s the company moved into building single seater race cars alongside their sportscar programme, with the latter Lola Mk.6 design drawing the attention of Ford, who subsequently used that design as the foundation for the Ford GT40 that would go on to claim a series of victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Broadley eventually moved out of the partnership with Ford and moved Lola into its own sportscar entity, with the Lola T70 forming the foundation for Lola's major international success for numerous years, while also competing in Formula One with privateer teams and later Honda towards the end of the 1960s.

Formula Failures vs Sportscar Success: 1970s - 2000s

Lola continued to split its time between building sportscars and single seaters throughout subsequent decades, with its former programme generating more success while Lola dipped in and out of programmes to race in F1 with little to show for it. In the 1970s Lola would work with Embassy Hill in F1 to build a car, based on their F5000 designs, although the majority of their design team would be killed in an aircraft crash in November 1975 alongside Graham Hill. On the opposite side of the firm, meanwhile, Lola would dominate the CanAm series with F5000 derived cars, while its more conventional Group 5 and Group 6 sportscars would fair well in other series.

The 1980s saw Lola continue its sportscar success as endurance racing evolved into Group C internatially and IMSA GTP in the United States, with Lola later partnering with Nissan to build chassis for their Group C programme as well as Chevrolet for their GTP operation. In F1, meanwhile, Lola would wait until 1985 to make its return, partnering with Haas to form Haas Lola F1, although an underwhelming couple of seasons the partnership ended and the F1 entity sold, although Lola would move on to work with the new-for-1987 Larrouse F1 Team, although after some minor success that programme would also falter in the early 1990s. Lola then signed with Scuderia Italia to build their chassis from 1993, although by the end of the 1994 season that programme too had ended and Lola was left with a bunch of test cars and little to show for its efforts.

The infamous Mastercard Lola programme followed and would see Lola forced into an early return to F1 in 1997, resulting in an underdeveloped, undertested, car that raced once before the Mastercard killed the programme and Lola withdrew from F1. In Sportscars, meanwhile, Lola would continue to work with Nissan for their Group C cars until that ruleset was dropped, and would move into the LMP2 class towards the end of the 1990s, enjoying more success in the privateer level field. This culminated in a pair of wins in the LMP2 class for 2005 and 2006, while Lola also built cars for the LMP1 class to compete at Le Mans and in the American Le Mans Series, although against automotive manufacturer backed teams success was harder to come by come the end of the 2000s.

Lola would also build cars for the Aston Martin LMP1 programme towards the end of the 2000s, with that base chassis competing until the end of 2013 with various privateer programmes in both the United States and European Le Mans Series.

Administration and Rebirth: 2012 - Present

After an abandoned attempt to enter F1 again in 2010, combined with a run of poor results in sportscars, saw Lola enter administration, with several assets from Lola sold on 16 October 2012, primarily between Multimatic and the Carl A Haas Automotive Group. This included the licence to use Lola Cars and their intellectual property, although this was largely unused and subsequently sold to Till Bechtolsheimer in 2022, in a deal that also saw Bechtolsheimer acquire the Lola Technical Centre. Bechtolsheimer announced a plan to have Lola cars back racing by the end of 2024, and would begin exploring a number of series which he could relaunch the Lola brand into.

Formula E History

A concept livery to announce Lola Yamaha's entry to Formula E.

Prior to announcing its rebirth, Lola would negotiate with Formula E about a potential entry as a manufacturer, before signing its own deal with Yamaha to form a technical partnership to design a powertrain for the series. Their combined entry was announced on 28 March 2024, serving as a relaunch for Lola as well, with the partnership targeting a debut in FE at the start of the 2024/25 ABB FIA Formula E World Championship. Lola Yamaha subsequently signed a deal with ABT Sportsline to actually run their cars, marking ABT's return to being a factory backed team in FE, with the car running for the first time towards the end of the 2023/24 season.

Before its first race in FE Lola would announce its plans to compete in the Generation 4 era, although Yamaha did not commit at the same time.

Formula E Record

The tables below show Lola Cars's full record in the FIA Formula E Championship.

Formula E Entries

The table below given and overview of Lola Cars's entries in Formula E:

Lola Cars's overall Formula E Record
Season	Official name	No.	Drivers	Car	DC Pos.	DC Pts.	TC Pos.	TC Pts.	MC Pos.	MC Pts.
2024/25	Lola Yamaha ABT Formula E Team	11	Lucas di Grassi	Lola Yamaha	21st	0	11th	0
		TBA	Zane Maloney		20th	0

Career Results

Listed below are the full career results of Lola Cars:

FIA Formula E Championship Record
Year	Entrant	No.	Rounds																	Pos.	Pts.
			1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17
2024/25
	Lola Yamaha ABT Formula E Team	11
		TBA

Results Key
Symbol	Meaning		Symbol	Meaning
1st	Winner		Ret	Retired
2nd	Second		DSQ	Disqualified
3rd	Third		DNS	Did Not Start
7th	Points Finish		16th	Non-Points Finish
NC	Not Classified		CAN	Race Cancelled
5th	Dropped Score		Italics	Fastest Lap
Bold	Pole Position		G	Group Fastest Lap

References

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