[deletraz]

Originally Posted by bjohnsonsmith

There was a problem with sponsors money but the real problem was with MasterCard wanting the car to race in 1997 not 1998 as was intended and as a result the car was never tested in the wind tunnel. You might want to read this.

http://www.f1rejects.com/teams/lola/profile.html

Yes, I've read it.

The MasterCard deal was said to be 'innovative', in that it depended upon using Lola's racing activities to draw in customers to the credit card program. This was never a guaranteed success in the first place, and it meant that cash was only trickling rather than flowing into the team.

Both drivers went to Brazil, only to read in the newspapers that their team had collapsed. In the space of a few short months, Lola's Grand Prix arm had built up some 6 million pounds in debt, half of which was owed to parent company Lola Cars. The risky sponsorship program with MasterCard had not helped things at all.

The car was awful because of the timetable shift. The team folded because it had no sponsor money.