Formula E program step one on the comeback trail for Lola
More than a decade after disappearing from the motorsport landscape, a sleeping giant is getting ready to awaken.
Till Bechtolsheimer gained control of the Lola name, intellectual property, headquarters and wind tunnel back in 2021, nine years after the original company went bankrupt and entered administration. Since then he’s been working to bring back one of motorsport’s most iconic manufacturers and now the reborn Lola is ready to be unleashed.
But while it’s famous for building chassis for IndyCar, Formula 1 and sports car categories, Lola’s revival will begin in a series where entrants can’t produce their own chassis. Instead, Lola’s comeback will be in Formula E, where it will develop a powertrain alongside Yamaha.
“(Motorsport has) certainly changed since Lola first started,” Lola’s motorsport director Mark Preston tells RACER. “Carbon monocoques are de rigueur now in just about every series all the way down to F4. We’ve been away for 10 years, so it’s not the best way to differentiate ourselves when we come back racing.
“And now you look to the future of motorsport and there is a huge amount of electrification. You look at F1, it’s going to be 50-percent electrified. WEC, obviously, has got a huge amount of electrification in LMH. So when you look at the future of motorsports, just like automotive — and you’ve got to remember that we are all working for the automotive industry, because we’re meant to be cutting the path for automotive — the future is electrified powertrains of some degree.”
It was a curious move to some — even sacrilegious to others — but as Preston explains, it’s actually a natural direction for Lola to take, and one it probably would have taken anyway had it not gone away.
“We see that one of the roles that will be interesting for Lola is systems integration, because it’s an electrified powertrain,” he says. “There’s a VCU (Vehicle Control Unit) software which has to put together control of the front powertrain, rear powertrain, efficiencies, energy management — there’s a huge amount of software and that’s the same as road cars.
“One of the last cars that was done (by Lola) was the Drayson Lola that did the land speed record. Certainly the powertrain was pioneered by Lola with Lord Drayson — he and I actually went and had a look at that car recently — (and) Lola was involved in the beginning of Formula E with Lord Drayson, so it’s a natural continuation in that way.”
One of Lola’s last projects was the B12/69 EV electric land speed record car with Lord Drayson. Jeff Bloxham/Motorsport Images
Lola’s upcoming Formula E foray is just one of what Preston calls “three pillars” to the modern day Lola business — all of which center around the idea of alternative technologies and fuels.
“Electrification was pillar one, so this is why the Formula E World Championship is the best place to be,” he explains. “Second pillar is hydrogen. They’re (the FIA) putting a focus on how hydrogen comes into racing … so the hydrogen element is very interesting. If you have a fuel cell, hydrogen Le Mans car, you will have a large amount of electrification because the hydrogen fuel cell needs an electric powertrain in order to be efficient — and even just work. And even a hydrogen internal combustion engine would most likely run with a large amount of electrification because in order to bring up the efficiency, you need to regenerate the energy on the car.
“The third pillar is sustainable fuels and materials — so might be where we get back into chassis (building), made of some sustainable materials and those elements. And also, obviously, there’s a lot going in the world of biofuels and E-fuels and all of those elements, which are coming into motorsports at the moment.”
Preston says Lola should have a better idea of a timeframe for when it might venture into the hydrogen game by the end of the year, once its integration into the WEC has been nailed down by the FIA. He also suggests Lola is keeping an eye on Extreme H, the upcoming rebrand of Extreme E which will become the world’s first all-hydrogen motorsport series next year, saying “it is of interest.”
For Preston, Formula E marks an ideal re-entry point for Lola as it looks to make its mark again in motorsports utilizing alternative technologies and fuels. Simon Galloway/Motorsport Images
Lola’s work in developing new technologies for motorsport could see it involved in wider applications by pure circumstance, too, with Bechtolsheimer eager for motorsport to regain its role as a place when innovation can be fostered.
“(Till is) very keen on motorsports leading again,” Preston says. “The core of the software that we’re developing for Formula E, we’ve made 70 to 75 percent of the core to work across any four-wheel-drive electrified powertrain. So it’s probably overkill for a petrol-powered engine with just one ECU, but for anything that’s going to have a high level of electrification, it’ll be a good starting point.”
For now the focus is on Formula E, which it is entering alongside Yamaha. The Japanese company has been involved with everything from Formula 1 to golf buggies, and brings vital knowledge from that expansive portfolio to the table which Lola will benefit from.
“They’re very interested in the electrification of powertrains as well because obviously their biggest markets are two wheels and marine,” says Preston. “They have a huge amount of powertrain knowledge in general — that’s their base that they work from. They do powertrains across a huge amount. If you ever go to the (Yamaha) museum in Iwata, just south of Tokyo, there’s everything from drones to ATVs, the amount of different powertrains they do is phenomenal.
“(Formula E) is the top level of electrification in motorsport at the moment; it’s logical that this would be the place to work on powertrains. So we’re working closely together with them on the powertrains.”
While it might be natural to assume that the giant powertrain company would be taking the lead over the revived legacy brand on the technical side, Preston insists that’s not the case and that it’s been a wholly collaborative effort throughout.
“One thing about a modern electrified vehicle is you don’t just stick an engine in the back with an ECU on it and a throttle cable to the throttle pedal,” he says. “It’s a huge amount of work in brake-by-wire, the brake balances, front powertrain, regeneration, brake bias — it’s an incredibly different machine than just a powertrain.
“That’s where Lola comes in, working together with Yamaha and collaborating heavily on everything to do with the powertrain itself from a hardware point of view. And then once the hardware is frozen, that’s homologated over the two years of GEN3 Evo, then we kind of all focus on the software together.
“So working together on integration, and bringing our knowledge of Formula E and integrating powertrains and all the elements, cooling, all those kinds of things that have to go on, still in a modern race car.”
Unlike Yamaha, though, one thing you won’t see Lola doing in the foreseeable future is venturing directly into the consumer arena, although it isn’t being ruled out as something that could be explored further down the line.
“Lola’s never made road cars and Till’s very keen that we won’t make road cars in the future,” Preston insists. “But you never know. If we do want to have a road car variant, then it would be obvious that Abt would help us do that. So that would fit together in a business world. But that’s for the long term future.”
The Abt, that Preston refers to, is Abt Sportsline — like the revived Lola’s business plan, the Formula E venture is a three-pronged attack, with the German company’s Abt Cupra Formula E team running the Lola-Yamaha powertrains from next season.
“Lola has traditionally never run a race team. So we also would like to be the manufacturer and support an operational race team, such as Abt who are obviously very experienced at that.
“It’s been a while coming and we’ve been chatting over the last year or so and it all came together, kind of at the last minute over the last few weeks.”
Works and client teams have been the norm in Formula E, but Lola-Yamaha will be different, at least to begin with. Sam Bagnall/Motorsport Images
The somewhat late nature of the decision to align with Abt Cupra means that Lola and Yamaha isn’t looking to supply a second team — to create a de facto four-car squad like Jaguar and Envision or Porsche and Andretti – and while Preston admits there are downsides to that, he is content focusing on just two cars at one team and making sure they’re competitive.
“Doing four cars would be probably too much for us at the beginning, even though by the rules, we do have to be able to provide another team,” he admits. “So we were kind of planning for that just in case. It is more beneficial to have more cars, but I think we’ve got enough on our plate to make sure we do a good job in the first year.
“So I’m probably happy that we’re running with one team at the beginning, and the future code changes as things go on.”
But in partnering with Lola, therefore aligning the team with former Aguri and Techeetah team principal Preston, it’ll create a partnership that the Australian estimates has won approximately one-in-four Formula E races to date when their respective achievements are tallied together.
“Yeah myself and Thomas (Biermaier, Abt CEO and team principal) reckon we’ve probably won 25 percent of the races and championships between us,” Preston says with a smile. “That was our rough (estimate) dinner, we’re gonna try and come up with a statistic.”
And while being something of a superteam when you look at the names involved, Preston isn’t getting too carried away — but he still wants “to be competitive and always be on a positive gradient.”
“My experience at Techeetah was from the time we started in Season 3, we were always on the up,” he says. “First year we won a race at the end, second, we won a drivers’ championship. Now I’m not saying it’s going to be easy — it looked to be so easy, perhaps, from the outside — but it’s always got to be going upwards, upwards and to the right.
“So, more points, more prizes, and yeah, keep on a good positive gradient. Use the experience of Abt to get us into the window as fast as possible and experience of many of the team members that are involved in the Lola team.”
