Failing is something we all do, and do often, without thinking much about it. At its core, failure is supposed to be unspectacular, a glimpse into a world we cannot enter.
Rarely is it spectacular enough to be remembered. Noticed at the time? Sure, we all fuck up, and some of us fuck up worse than others. And of course, some people are assholes and must remind us of how badly we’ve fucked up. But, the outside world doesn’t care. Your failures are a great unknown to the vast majority of the people you will ever meet.
Mastercard-Lola’s Formula One team in 1997, however, gives us a look into that rarefied air. Even 25 years later, the T97/30 trudging its way around Melbourne literal miles off the pace still gets brought up as one of the worst F1 cars of all time.
After that weekend, poof. The team was gone.
Lola wasn’t new to making good racing cars, and Mastercard wasn’t exactly some hot shot start-up company. Both of them were competent enough to make the collaboration between them seem like it would be a solid foundation. Yet, it blew up, and has marked Lola’s reputation, even to this day.
I. 1993
1993 was one of the biggest transformational years in F1’s history. Brazilian legend Ayrton Senna attempted to leave his home team at McLaren to drive for Williams. Williams’ 1992 and 1993 cars were the most technologically advanced in the history of the sport, with active suspension, automatic upshifts, and sophisticated traction control.
That car powered Alain Prost to his fourth and final world championship. Of course, the reason Prost won that driver’s title and not Senna, is that Prost wrote it in his contract specifically that Senna couldn’t be at Williams.
Some young guy named Michael Schumacher was powering around an improving Benneton as well. Future world champion Mika Hakkinen debuted for McLaren this season, and even outqualified Senna in his very first race for the team.
Way, way down the order. Scuderia Italia was another of the minnow teams struggling to stay afloat. When Italian race car maker Dallara had stopped building their chassis1 after 1992, the team needed someone to fabricate their cars for the 1993 season.
In came Lola.
Lola had built F1 cars before. As recently as 1990, their partnership with the Larousse team had put them at 6th in the constructors championship. Even before 1990, they’d done at least three other stints in F1 as a chassis builder.
However, Lola’s T93/30 design ended up being a terrible dog of a car. Michele Alboreto, who was one of the drivers for Scuderia Italia in 1993, thought “someone was playing a joke on me at first” after he’d driven it for the first time. The car had no downforce and was overweight, two things one really doesn’t like to hear about a F1 car.
In a small miracle, Alboreto’s teammate Luca Badoer managed a 7th place in the San Marino Grand Prix in April of that year. However, that was an era where points were only awarded to drivers who finished in at least 6th place.
Not that it would have mattered anyways. Formula 1 only paid out teams based on constructor’s championship standings2, and only paid out to 10th place at that. With 11 teams scoring at least three points – and Scuderia Italia scoring none – it meant that there was no prize money coming into the team.
Chesterfield Cigarettes, who was Scuderia Italia’s sponsor that season, was so embarrassed that they pulled their sponsorship before the final two races. The team would eventually merge with feisty backmarker3 Minardi in 1994, and the Scuderia Italia name would never be seen in grand prix racing ever again.
But, in the cloud of all that failure, Lola was still seeking more money. They knew what they wanted. No longer were they going to partner with other teams.
Instead, they wanted a F1 team all to themselves.
II. Origins
Lola spent part of their of 1994 fiddling around with their IndyCar program that had been so successful. In 1993, former F1 world champion Nigel Mansell won his IndyCar championship in a Lola-designed chassis for IndyCar powerhouse Newman-Haas Racing.
By 1994, though, fellow British chassis maker Reynard had joined the American open-wheel fray. They’d eventually have immediate success with future F1 champ Jacques Villeneuve in 1995, but Lola still supplied 22 of IndyCar’s 29 teams with at least one car in ‘94. It didn’t help them win that championship, as Penske’s dominant combination of in-house chassis and Mercedes-Ilmor engine passed everyone for the IndyCar title.
Another project grasped Lola’s eye that year; their entry for 1995 into Formula One.
Lola had spent most of 1994 designing a car to race in the ‘95 season, but ultimately couldn’t make the grid, as they failed to pay the mandated deposit the FIA4 had for new teams.
Instead, the car that they had been working on – known as the T95/30 – became a testing-only car that was notable for the peeled-off airbox.5 Scotsman Allan McNish attempted to hustle it around in testing all throughout 1995, but the project was doomed from the start.
Much like the airbox, there was no momentum riding on this car. By 1995, money had dried up, and Lola was starting to see problems in every category they raced in. IndyCar wasn’t the only place they were losing ground; the junior categories saw them getting crushed by Reynard as well.
The FIA did throw a monetary bone at Lola, picking them to build the chassis for F1 feeder series Formula 30006 in 1996. While they also tried to get their IndyCar program back on track, Lola owner and founder Eric Broadley still had his sights on F1.
III. Eric Broadley
Failures are often acted out by the most successful among us.
Broadley is no exception. Wikipedia lists him as “one of the influential automobile designers of the post-war period,” and putting all his accomplishments on paper would astonish anyone.
Lola was founded in 1959, but their history goes back to 1955. At that time, Broadley was doing the equivalent of what car people in high school did with their first paycheck. Old, normal cars were given souped-up engines and had lighter parts installed. These sorts of cars raced all throughout the UK for prizes and trophies.
The Broadley Special was a masterstroke. It dominated the four-wheeled scene in mid-1950s British sports car racing. From there, he moved on to building the Lola Mk1, which was the first car to lap the Brands Hatch Indy circuit in under a minute. The Mk1 also dominated the British racing scene, and others wanted their own version of it.
With £2,000, and a shop 20 miles outside of London, Lola Cars was born.
By 1961, Formula 1 teams had started to put Eric Broadley’s fledgling company on their radar. This included pre-World War II racing legend Reg Parnell, who had been lagging behind in the midfield with his Formula 1 team. He contacted Broadley, and asked him to design a car. Broadley accepted.
The result was the Lola Mk4, which had a short, fun, and dangerous time in F1.
Nothing about the Mk4 was in the ballpark of safe, even by 1962 F1 standards. The legendary John Surtees complained the entire year of “chassis flexing”, which means the actual body of the car itself is moving under the high G-forces of turning in. When a mechanic finally put the car up to inspect it, three wheels made it up off the ground. One, however, did not.
Despite the car being a terrifying death trap, even compared to its competitors, it had some good results. It even won a race that someone thought to name the “2000 Guineas”. Unfortunately, those guineas weren’t points paying, so it didn’t actually count.
The highest highs came in the summer of 1962. At Lola’s home British Grand Prix, Surtees managed a second place finish behind fellow Briton Jim Clark. Two weeks later, Surtees came in second again at the legendary Nordschleife, back when F1 had more balls than they did sense.
By the back half of 1962, the Mk4 was falling behind. In a bid to improve performance, they tried to copy some parts from race winning chassis builder Lotus. It didn’t help, and Lola’s first season in F1 was over.
The money had dried up. Yet, Eric Broadley was looking forward to his next project.
The FIA, at the time, was looking for new entries into its sports car classifications. Instead of having to make at least 100 versions of a car before that car model could race, the rule was changed to zero.
Broadley’s wheels were turning, and soon, his vision was realized. It was a souped-up frankencar, much like the ones he’d built to dominate British racing in the 1950s. Yet, this car was revolutionary.
Lola’s Mk6 was perhaps not the Big Bang of sports cars as we know them today, but it was damn close.
The car sat very low to the ground; the shape was built to glide through the air. It was a giant wing that stuck to the ground, making it easier to keep on the road at high speed. With the engine mounted in front of the rear tires, it made the car’s balance feel more intuitive to the driver, and made the car easier to turn. Altogether, it was built to be an easy to control car that could compete with the big boys.
Nothing that Lola did individually with that car was new. Streamlined designs have been around since the 1930s in race cars, and even Enzo Ferrari himself had given in and put the engine in the middle of his cars. But, all these specific components added together meant that Broadley’s car could compete with Ferrari’s powerful cars with a lighter, less powerful engine.
The Mk6 was running ninth before it crashed out of the 1963 24 Hours of Le Mans. Of course, it’s a miracle it even raced at all. Prior to the race, Broadley had to cut a hole in the roof in order to give the driver enough room to actually see the track. Yet, this car, this deathtrap, had a legendary future in store.
At about that same time, Enzo Ferrari himself was in talks to sell his namesake company to Ford. He had one request, though; he’d get to keep running the Scuderia’s7 racing division himself.
Ford refused to let him have control after the sale. The negotiation turned hostile, and was broken off afterward. Ferrari was angry that these ungrateful Americans did not appreciate his know-how and racing pedigree. Ford viewed Ferrari as too prideful, and someone who deserved a comeuppance.
To pay Enzo back, Ford wanted to run their own sports car at Le Mans. If they couldn’t buy Ferrari, they’d just build a better car than Ferrari instead.
Here, then, is where Eric Broadley appears, stage left. Lola Cars was chosen by Ford to build the better Ferrari, mostly due to the promise that the Mk6 showed in that 1963 Le Mans race. The Lola Mk6 evolved into the Ford GT40, one of the most legendary sports cars of all time. A car that originally was built in a suburban London shed with Saab parts, had become an American dream car that won Le Mans four straight times.
From seemingly nothing, Broadley had built something special. Thirty years later, his Formula One team would attempt to recreate this piston-powered miracle.
IV. We’ve Got Four Months
After Lola’s ambitions in 1995 had gone, they pushed back the F1 project to 1996. Even at this point, it was obvious that Lola was in over their head. But, they pressed on anyways.
Bringing on Pacific Grand Prix head Keith Wiggins should have been the first clue something was going to be amiss. Wiggins had founded teams in series that were lower down the pecking order, but his recently dead team in Formula One was out of money before it even really started.
It was probably not good, then, that Wiggins was brought into Lola in order to attract sponsors and money for Lola’s Formula One entry. While details are sparse, it seems that Wiggins was not able to find the money. He left in August of 1996, as the deal between him and Lola “collapsed”.8
All throughout 1996, articles would say “Lola considering decision to enter F1 in 1997”. Every time a supposed decision deadline would come and go, Lola had kicked the can down the road once more.
This is unheard of in modern Formula One, as most teams need multiple years to set up anything. A team waiting multiple months to decide whether they’re coming into F1 for the next season is a failure on its own. Lack of planning will always get you in the end, even if it’s painful in the short term.
By November of 1996, though, it was clear; Lola was going to enter F1 in 1997. Not only were they going in, but they were going to build their own engines. This was unusual, but not entirely unheard of, as mid-pack team Arrows built their own engines in 1998. Still, it was too much at one time.
The team was dead right here. Who killed them? Lack of hubris was one of the knifes, but Mastercard was the real murderer. It was too late for a team to enter, and Eric Broadley himself knew that; the team had been aiming for a 1998 entry by the end of 1996. Yet, Mastercard pushed for the team’s entry into the 1997 season, threatening to pull their potentially massive sponsorship deal if they failed to enter.
A team that thought they had time, didn’t anymore. They had four months.
V. Putting On a Brave Face
Failure was guaranteed, and Mastercard knew it.
Mastercard has promised Lola up to $45 million per year. Even for F1, this is a massive amount of money. Back in 1997, that number must have jumped off the page.
Except, that $45 million was fake.
Mastercard sponsored Lola through a membership club deal. A cardholder would buy a certain level of membership, and the team would be funded with the money those cardholders spent on those memberships. With 300 million cardholders, converting just a fraction of a percentage of them into members seemed like it could be easily done.
Well, in theory, it seemed easy. In fact, nobody cared enough to want to spend loads of money hanging around with drivers that had been knocking around lower series for years.
Although they were still going to build their own engines, they got a terrible Ford engine from the year before to power them the first few months of the year. In cheaping out, though, they untangled another thread of doom to this frankenproject. The engine was so bad, that the team that used it before failed to qualify in some races.
To make matters even worse, they were using a design from IndyCar. While that may seem logical, IndyCar does not invest anywhere near the money or development in their cars that F1 does. Formula One is one of the biggest sporting competitions on Earth, so the cars that compete are at the very fringes of what technology can do. An IndyCar-based design trying to compete in F1 would be like trying to go to the moon in a Cessna.
At least their driver lineup was solid for a new team, as Italian Vincenzo Sospiri and Brazilian Ricardo Rosset came on board. Sospiri and Rosset actually knew each other from competition quite well, as both had been teammates in Formula 3000 in 1995. Sospiri edged out Rosset for the Formula 3000 title, but Rosset was the one who got into F1 a year early.
Sospiri, meanwhile, was sidelined for 1996, as he was only able to secure a backup driver role for Benneton, before the call to drive for Lola in 1997 came.
Rosset came into the team via a sponsorship deal. Mastercard needed a Brazilian driver as a marketing tool in Brazil and South America, so Rosset got the other car.
In Formula One, teams rarely make a profit, so what the sponsor on the car wants, the sponsor on the car usually gets. The team was going to be uncompetitive anyways, so they may as well take on someone that keeps the sponsors happy, and the money flowing.
Of course, for Lola, there was no money flowing. But, they didn’t quite know that yet.
On February 20, 1997, Lola unveiled the T97/30, which they’d only finished the day before. The car looked very stylish, and the drivers — as well as Eric Broadley — were not saying that it was awful. Quite the contrary, actually, as they talked themselves up big time.
The company is ready for this, and I would hope that by the end of four years, we will be ready to win the championship.
In Formula One’s season recap video from 1997, the car reveal is shown, along with a short quote from Sospiri. That quote would go on to seem almost pitiful, like the racing gods were laughing in his face.
I think we will have some small problems. I hope as small as possible.
That was as good as it ever got for Lola.
Two weeks later, Lola’s car was at Silverstone for the final test before heading out to Australia for the first race of the season. On what must have been a cold, damp day – as English winters are – the car was on its eighth lap of the legendary Silverstone circuit. Then, the engine went bang, smoke poured out of the back, and the day was done.
What should have been at least a couple dozen laps around Silverstone turned into just eight. The car wouldn’t run again for three days. However, this time, it would be in competition.
VI. For My First (and Last) Time
The weekend would go down in history for Lola’s legendarily slow pace. In the first practice session, Lola (seen above) was 23 seconds off of the fastest time. The car looked unstable even at the low speeds it was able to do, with the driver’s head jerking around in different directions. It also meant that the car had to constantly get out of the way of faster cars, which made it a safety hazard.
In qualifying, Sospiri outqualified his teammate Ricardo Rosset by a full second, which is a ton of time in F1. Of course, it didn’t help that Sospiri himself was 11.6 seconds slower that pole sitter Jacques Villeneuve’s time. With the car at only 113% of the fastest time, it meant that Lola didn’t even qualify for the race.
As a matter of fact, they were five full seconds away from qualifying, as a team had to get within 107% of the fastest time in qualifying to get into the race. If a second is a lot of time to give up, then five seconds means you’re fucked.
Lola went back home to England, having the most awful weekend a team has ever had in over 70 years of F1 history.
Even other F1 teams were publicly joking about Lola’s failures. The big whopper to come out of that weekend was that Lola’s laps didn’t have times, they had expiration dates. It didn’t get better at a tire test for their tire supplier a few weeks later, as Lola was 16 seconds off the fastest time.
Thirty years ago, Eric Broadley had turned £2,000 into a racing company that built a four-time Le Mans winner. This time, though, he’d turned millions of dollars into his own personal undoing.
VII. At the Back of the Barn
Publicly, Broadley was once again building his team up, as all good team owners should. He was optimistic the car would qualify in Brazil, and that things would only go up from there.
In private, though, the company’s debts were about to eat them alive. The Mastercard money wasn’t coming in, and Lola had taken on debt, assuming that the money would come good. What resulted was big trouble, as Lola was now £6.3 million in debt. Creditors were breathing down Broadley’s neck.
The team flew to Brazil, but they wouldn’t take part in the race. Broadley had canceled the team’s funding, and it was all over. Everyone inside the team was shocked. Lives were uprooted, and many people worked very long and very hard to try to make this team something better than it was.
For the drivers, they were left out in the cold too. Ricardo Rosset would eventually get another shot in 1998 at F1, but not before being left without a team for 1997. Vincenzo Sospiri’s career had lasted one weekend, and those awful sessions in Melbourne would be the first and last time he sat in a F1 car.
But, sentimental emotions have never been worth much in motor racing. The team was gone. Eventually, Broadley would lose the entire company later on in the year. What began as a dream to go it alone, to do what he’d done so well for years, turned into the greatest F1 flop of all time.
Failure often comes after a string of success, but also comes when we push the boundaries of that success to its limits. Common sense doesn’t work in that realm. Instead, everyone is Alexander the Great or Augustus, until the realities of the world start to press through and take them like reality takes all the others.
Eric Broadley’s most successful time in racing was in its infant stages, back when a small investment could do something with a race car. In the modern world of mega teams and conglomerates, though, he was far behind. Corporate giants like Mastercard are all too willing to exploit that backwardness for profit.
Of course, Mastercard turned out better than anyone else in this story. After they failed to promote or care about Lola, they found another team, and kept right on in the sport.
To fail, then, is to be at the whim of a time and place you had no choice in picking. Our only hope, then, is that we make out good while we still have that time and place on our side.
What a chassis builder does is build the actual body of the car, then sell it to a racing team, who puts whatever engine and gearbox they have in it. Names like Lola, Dallara, and Reynard were the three big chassis builders at the time. Dallara especially is notable, even today. They not only construct IndyCar’s current car template, but also build the Haas F1 team’s chassis as well.
The constructor’s championship is what the teams compete for, and is important as far as how much money they’ll have during the next season.
A backmarker is a team that consistently competes in the last few positions of a race.
The FIA (Federation Internationale de l’Automobile) oversees and sanctions most racing competitions in the world, as well as publishing safety standards and race procedures. F1 has to go by certain rules the FIA mandates, and F1 teams have to be FIA compliant in certain areas, such as safety or budget.
The airbox is the back end of the body that slopes down onto the wing of an F1 car.
Formula 3000 is equivalent to F2 nowadays. It is the final step in a driver’s open-wheel career before they go on to F1. For a NASCAR analogy, it was the equivalent of the Busch/Xfinity Series.
Ferrari has always been called the “Scuderia”, which simply means “team” in Italian.
The articles and clippings enclosed are scans from a message board user. However, the text in them is the same as in the online archives that racing magazines such as Motorsport and Autosport have.