Georg Hallau, driving his 1972, Lola T310 down the International Pits Straight in the rain, during HSCC Thundersports Race at the 2019 Silverstone Classic.
The T310 was the successor to the relatively successful 1971 Can-Am contender, the T260, which had taken two race wins and two seconds in the hands of Jackie Stewart. It was a very different beast from the Stewart car, whereas the T260 was narrow and squat the T310 was very wide and low following a lot of wind tunnel work in conjunction with bodymaker Specialised Mouldings. It was claimed that the new design gave a better downforce to drag ratio of any previous Lola and it featured a very low nose designed to "shovel" up the air and pass it over the body to the rear wing which was mounted low and hung out to the rear to minimise drag. The aluminium monocoque was very wide allowing plenty of room for the 78-gallon fuel tank and much of the running gear came from the 1971 T222 customer car. The Chevrolet engine was mounted with a 2° rake to help lower the centre of gravity and suspension was conventional with, unlike the T260, outboard spring/damper units. The wheelbase was the longest ever seen in Can-Am and it was one of the widest at ( up on the T260). Front and rear track was 66in. (58"in. on the T260) while overall length at 180in. was a huge 41in. up on the T260. The official empty weight was 1550lb. In all too typical Lola rush the car only had one test session at Silverstone with Fran Gardner doing all the driving and it missed the opening round of the 1972 season. A bemused David Hobbs was thrown in at the deep-end and he found the car had incredibly heavy steering and lacked the hoped for downforce and high top speed and continual updates did little to improve the car by much. Not surprisingly results were poor against the hugely powerful turbo-charged Porsche 917/10 with a best finish of 4th at Watkins Glen. This would be the last bespoke Can-Am design from Lola, but the Huntingdon marque would still have a lot of success to come in the Series when new regulations were introduced in 1977.
Size: 4773px × 3278px
Location: Silverstone Circuit, Towcester, Northamptonshire, NN12 8TN
Photo credit: © John Gaffen / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 2, 1972, 2019, 5100cc, aluminium, chevrolet, class, classic, david, day, driver, engine, georg, hallau, hobbs, hscc, international, lola, monocoque, motosports, mouldings, pits, race, rain, rear, red, satrurday, shower, silverstone, sp4, specialised, spray, straight, t310, thundersports, white, wing
