Cor, we’re rattling through these, now, aren’t we? Well, after the no-brainers of the last few days (although I bet some suspected the Macca would be higher), here’s something a bit more out of left field…
There’s a very real possibility that, unless you were a full-on F1 geek in 1997, you’ve never even seen this car. And that’s for a good reason – it never actually competed in a Grand Prix, and indeed only took part in one qualifying session, in Melbourne, where it was quite ridiculously off the pace of even the struggling Arrows. The story of the ill-fated Lola team is better told elsewhere (short version : if you’re planning on entering a team in 1998, don’t let your sponsor decide a few months beforehand to chuck you in ’97 instead), but amid their brief and catastrophic existence, one thing stood out : their cars, bedecked in full MasterCard branding, looked really nice. I’ve mentioned before the golden rule of not using more than three main colours in a livery – but somehow, Lola managed to flaunt it with style, their red/yellow/blue side-on scheme topped off beautifully by the silvery-white top elevation. It even manages to make the car – one of the bulkiest and ugliest of the modern era – look good, and that’s no mean feat. Incidentally, at their original launch, the blue parts were instead green – and it still looked good.
8 Comments
gareth
pure gold…nice choice
Marleen
Oh, I want to see the green. But
> You don’t have permission to access /teams/lola/large/97-launch.jpg on this server.
I don’t much fancy the combination of blue and orange,in general, I think it’s a very “male” colour combo 😉 but the subtle gradient makes it look glossy in a nice way, kind of like painted games workshop eldar miniatures. … ? Like these…
http://tinyurl.com/yww3ey
http://tinyurl.com/2gpg4k
S. Patrick
D’ohh, shouldn’t have hotlinked. But if you follow the link to F1rejects’ profile of Lola, you’ll find an image gallery that features the green version.
Marleen
Thanks for the directions. And hm. No, that particular green doesn’t really work for me, surprisingly I prefer the blue design, too.
Aly
This was a cracking livery, i preferred the original mastercard only scheme that they had at autosport international that year from the above metioned F1rejects sight.
It’s a shame they were so far off the pace, would have been good to see them running on the TV!
Lesser-Spotted F1 Liveries « Formula One Colours
[…] inspired livery, arguably one of the best colour schemes of the late 90’s [Editor's note: I agree!], despite never making it onto the […]
harry morgan
very good car, shame they failed to lap 107% of villeneuve’s pole time, sospiri 11 seconds and rosset 13 seconds then quitting in brazil
A 1997 MasterCard Lola
Hey look, it’s me!