HINDSIGHT – 1971 LOLA T260 CANAM
The final attempt to increase frontal downforce saw this boom-mounted front wing added for the ’71 finale at Riverside. Note 15in front wheels
The T260 raced on in 1972 in private hands and was still competing when the CanAm series folded in 1974
Scot won the race. For round three, at Road
In 1972, the replacement for the T260 Lola CanAm racecar was the high downforce T310. The low drag experiment was now just a distant memory
were breaking new ground in racecar aerodynamics so didn’t have past experience to call on. And of course, cars weren’t instrumented in the way they are nowadays, so it was virtually impossible to quantify your results. That meant it was quite easy to be misled by wind tunnel results and then get a rude awakening when you tested at full scale on an actual car.’
at Mosport, Stewart was able to run the T260 in dry conditions and found the handling not to his liking – a worrying combination of front-end understeer and a lack of rear-end grip. ‘In comparison to the cars he was used to driving in Formula 1, the T260 would have felt like that,’ says Marston. ‘Compared to F1, a CanAm car was big and bulky and rolled in the corners. It
“a worrying combination of front- end understeer and a lack of rear-end grip”
RUDE AWAKENING Just such a rude awakening came at the opening round of the CanAm series at Mosport. Before it was shipped to Canada, the T260 had completed just a single day of testing at Silverstone where it had been shaken down by Frank Gardner, after which Jackie Stewart, who was to race the car in the CanAm series, drove it for a few exploratory laps in the rain. In a private test session
was a hell of a different car.’ Despite these apparent handling shortcomings, in the opening two rounds of the 1971 CanAm series, the T260 took pole position at Mosport and led the race until a transmission oil leak stopped the car. At St Jovite, Stewart managed to safely land the T260 when its nose lifted on a brow and was able to capitalise when the leading McLaren driver slowed due to illness, and the
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www.racecar-engineering.com • February 2012
Atlanta, the T260’s understeer was addressed by the fitting of dive planes on the front wheelarches, and the downforce they generated was balanced by moving the previously centrally- mounted wing further rearwards. Stewart was again able to lead the McLarens in the race before retiring with a rear suspension failure. Before this, though, the effectiveness of the dive planes had been demonstrated when the right front tyre wore through the bodywork above. At Watkins Glen, Stewart led again and, at 194mph, was the fastest through the speed trap, 10mph quicker than the best of the factory McLarens, but the car succumbed to one of the numerous engine failures that blighted the T260’s campaign.
ENGINE PROBLEMS ‘Most of the engine problems we suffered that year were invariably the result of using an aluminium cylinder block with iron liners,’ recalls Marston. ‘I can vividly remember that often after the car had done the first practice session without a problem and the engine had cooled off, perhaps even overnight, within a few laps of starting the next session it would be in the pits with a blown head gasket because a couple of the liners had dropped.’ A month later, at Mid-Ohio, the T260 sported a revised nose section, which gave greater front wheel clearance. Initially, the T260 had been designed to run on 13in diameter front wheels, in the interest of minimised
frontal area, but these had been swapped to taller 15in rims by the Atlanta race. In the race Stewart, concerned at the circuit’s safety standards, drove conservatively and won when the McLarens hit trouble. Next time out, on the long straights of Elkhart Lake, where the low-drag Lola ought to have been in its element, fins were fitted on the tail to channel air toward the rear wing and form end plates and a larger splitter was also tried during qualifying but was discarded for the race. But once again, engine issues ended its race. For the race at
TECH SPEC
Engine: 8.1-litre (495ci) Chevrolet LS-1 V8; aluminium cylinder block and heads; cast iron liners
Chassis: sheet aluminium, full- length monocoque
Bodywork: glass fibre mouldings
Cooling: side-mounted water radiators; side-mounted engine oil radiators; rear-mounted transmission oil radiator
Front suspension: rocker arms with horizontally and laterally- mounted concentric coil springs and dampers; adjustable anti-roll bar
Rear suspension: reversed lower wishbone; single top links and radius arms; concentric coil springs and dampers; adjustable anti-roll bar
Dampers: Bilstein two-way adjustable
Transmission: Hewland LG600 six-speed
Brakes: cast iron discs, outboard mounted at front, inboard at rear
Fuel capacity: 65 US gallons
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