The 10 greatest Lolas
CHOOSING HIGHLIGHTS FROM SIX DECADES OF SUCCESS WAS A TRICKY TASK, BUT HERE’S AUTOSPORT’S PICK OF THE FINEST CARS FROM A GREAT MARQUE – AND WE DRIVE THE TOP THREE
Mk1? T70? B98/10? Which do you think is best? We select our favourites and track test the top three at Donington Park
Martin Birrane loved Lola, loved sportscar racing and loved the Le Mans 24 Hours. So it was only natural at a time when prototype racing was beginning to boom that he should set his new acquisition to work on a car for the LMP900 and SR1 categories. The result was the open-top B98/10, the first ground-up design to carry the ‘B’ prefix to its type number.
The project was led by Peter Weston, one of the first wave of newcomers to join after Birrane saved Lola at the end of 1997. Within months, he’d been put in charge of the sportscar programme and given a simple remit.
“The brief I was given was to design a car that could beat the Ferrari 333SP and the Riley & Scott MKIII,” recalls Weston. “They were the benchmarks of the day and Martin wanted something that was better than them.”
The Lola hit its target. On the day after the inaugural Petit Le Mans enduro at Road Atlanta, James Weaver tested the first B98/10 with a Lazano-built Ford V8 in the back. He was immediately quicker than the cars it was designed to beat, as well as the Porsche
911 GT1-98 that had claimed pole.
“Pole had been a 1m13.7s [set by Allan
Mcnish] and we did a 1m12.4s or something like that with James,” recalls Weston.
On the back of that performance, Lola sold eight B98/10s with various engines for the 1999 season. Among them was a Judd V10-powered car for the French DAMS team for an assault on the Sports Racing World Cup. They would go on to win four of the final five races with Jean-marc Gounon and Eric Bernard driving.
Gounon has fond memories of the car: “It had exceptional agility. It was a real racing car, so you needed to be aggressive with it on turn-in. If you did that, it would just stick to the road.”
And he has no doubts that Weston and the design team met their brief. “I drove the Ferrari as well and it was better in the slow-speed corners,” he says, “but anywhere quick, the Lola was better.”
The B98/10 was swiftly followed out of Lola’s Huntingdon factory by its replacement for 2000, the B2K/10, as well as the B2K/40 and the MG EX257. Lola Cars International continued making prototypes, more than 70 in total, throughout its life. The tone had been set by the B98/10.