On paper, it sounded reasonable enough: Lola T97/30 chassis, Ford Zetec-R V8 engines and, most importantly, major corporate backing from Mastercard.
But F1 teams don’t race on paper, and the reality was a total disaster.
The driver of the project was Mastercard’s eagerness to launch the ‘F1 Club’ for card holders that was supposed to fund the team. It meant that the project was horribly rushed – basically one year earlier than initially planned. Banking rival HSBC was joining F1 with the new Stewart Grand Prix team, which had a full year of preparation under its belt and a long-term works support deal with Ford.
The car was desperately undercooked, and gave drivers Vincenzo Sospiri and Ricardo Rosset little chance of making the starting grid for many reasons…
Vincenzo Sospiri, Lola T97/30 Ford
Photo by: Sutton Images
The IndyCar-based chassis hadn’t been designed for the Ford V8 engine, as Al Melling was supposed to be developing a V10 Lola-badged engine in-house – but that never got to see the light of day.
The Ford customer supply came from the Forti team, which had folded in ’96, and the team had struggled with reliability – even suffering a failure straight-line running at the Santa Pod dragstrip. Plus, there’d been no time for windtunnel testing either!
Vincenzo Sospiri, Lola T97/30 Ford
Photo by: Sutton Images
Ricardo Rosset and Vincenzo Sospiri, Lola
Photo by: Sutton Images
Former FIA Formula 3000 champion Sospiri gave it his best shot in qualifying, but fell way short of the 107 per cent cut-off required to make the race.
Rather fatefully, Lola founder Eric Broadley had said at the car’s launch in London: “The 107% rule is actually quite a large margin. If we can’t do that, then we shouldn’t be in it.”
Eric Broadley, Lola Team Principal, a guest, Ricardo Rosset, Lola and Vincenzo Sospiri, Lola
Photo by: Sutton Images
Oddly, Sospiri blames Jacques Villeneuve for the fact he’s never started a grand prix…
“If he hadn’t done that fantastic pole lap, I would have qualified,” he claims of JV’s pole time, which was some 1.75secs clear of the opposition. Closer analysis reveals that Sospiri’s time was almost 12secs slower than Villeneuve, and that Arrows’ Pedro Diniz was in fact the unfortunate soul who only just missed the 107%.
But, after some arguing from Tom Walkinshaw, Diniz was allowed to race anyway due to his speed in free…
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