HINDSIGHT – 1971 LOLA T260 CANAM
Donnybrooke, the T260 was reset to the Road Atlanta / Watkins Glen aero configuration after the taller front wheelarches were found to add too much drag and to partially obscure flow into the radiator inlets. Stewart again forced his way into the lead, only for a puncture to ruin his race.
AERO UPDATE For round eight at Edmonton, Broadley and Marston swapped duties, Marston returning to the UK to start work on Lola’s 1972 customer car designs, while Broadley came out to Canada with a major aerodynamic update for the T260. At the rear, the wing was repositioned overhanging the tail on twin tubular supports and a new shovel-shaped nose fitted. Abandoning the low- drag approach, this aimed at generating downforce by means of an aerofoil section on the
A 2011 REAPPRAISAL L
ow drag was the priority with the T260 and, in retrospect,
it was definitely the wrong approach,’ says Bob Marston. ‘Our thinking at that time was that you couldn’t beat reduced frontal area if you were looking to cut down drag, so at first we ran the T260 with smaller than usual front wheels. Shadow took that idea to the extreme with their 1970 CanAm car and, in most aspects, it didn’t work at all but we felt our initial approach with the T260 was a sort of halfway measure. Of course, McLaren went the other way and wiped the floor with us… ‘Thinking about the T260
now, we had a huge amount of horsepower and we really should have capitalised on that to generate a lot of downforce, and hence cornering power. Instead, we thought we’d try the straight-line speed approach, but I suppose you have to bear in mind that in those days there was less appreciation of the relationship between aerodynamics and car performance.
‘When the car didn’t work
as we expected, it took time to realise what was our problem. Eventually, we did come to the conclusion that we needed front-
end downforce and made changes to the nose. An admission of defeat, if you like, but you have to do whatever it takes to get the job done. The dive planes we tried first wouldn’t have been a wind tunnel development because we didn’t do any further wind tunnel testing after car went to America. In those days any wind tunnel tests were done only at the beginning of a project. Many other Sportscars had previously
nose were ever going to give us. From what I recall, they found it was better than the original nose, but it still wasn’t the answer to the problem. So, at the next race at Laguna Seca, the big front wing was added, which was another ‘Eric-ism’. It was really a case of realising that nothing had worked well enough up to then and wondering what the hell could we do next, and reasoning that sticking a damn great wing on
“in those days there was less
appreciation of the relationship between aerodynamics and car performance”
used dive planes and similar devices before we put them on the T260. After it became clear to us that we needed more front-end downforce, the dive planes were a quick way of addressing that. ‘Eric’s Edmonton nose design
was an exercise in thinking on your feet, because by then it had occurred to us that we needed a lot more front-end downforce than adding dive planes and front splitter extensions to the original
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the nose was guaranteed to have some effect. Deciding how far the front wing was ahead of the nose and how far the rear wing overhung the tail was done by experience and intuition. That’s how you worked in those days. ‘Given time, there would have
been adjustment built into the wings, and there would have been a nice little test day somewhere to optimise everything, but there never was that sort of time
available. The CanAm schedule was very tight, mainly because travelling and transporting the car and equipment from race to race took so long, it didn’t really matter what good ideas you had during the series as you just didn’t have the time to put them into action. You had to make the right decisions at the beginning. In fact, before the beginning of the season. Once the racing had started, you had to run with what you had and make the best of it. With the T260 we were always playing catch up to the McLarens. ‘My main recollection of
that CanAm series is that Jackie Stewart gave me a hard time! He was a superb driver but, in my experience, he wasn’t a development driver. As far as I recall, we never did any development running with him. I certainly never went testing with him, he would literally fly in just for practice and the race – obviously he was committed to other things. Having said that, I’m certain that a lot of the results the T260 achieved were mainly down to Stewart. He drove the wheels off it. If it hadn’t been for him, I think we would have been a lot further down the field.’
The T260 in its interim aero configuration with nose dive planes, raised front wheelarches and a further rearward wing
underside and a central duct. Initially, the new nose was run unadorned but, by the race, additional side plates had been added to it in the search for further downforce. Stewart was slightly closer to the McLarens in qualifying and looked set to win the rain-affected race, until he first collided with a back marker and then later spun out, due to
handling problems. By the time of the race at Laguna Seca three weeks later, the T260 had undergone a further major transformation. The Edmonton ducted nose had been replaced with the original rounded nose, ahead of which was mounted an out-rigged, end-plated front wing of similar dimensions to that at the rear, as
Broadley sought to pile on front- end downforce. The rear wing angle was increased to balance the car, but the Lola’s handling still wasn’t to the drivers’ liking. Nevertheless, Stewart appeared to have won the race until one of the McLarens was reinstated as the winner, despite ignoring a black flag. For the 1971 series finale, the T260 again ran the out-rigged front wing, this time matched with an end-plated rear wing. Even in this maximum downforce configuration, the Lola ended up nearly three seconds slower than the pole-sitting McLaren. A hard- charging Stewart was running in second place in the race when a piston failure brought his frustrating campaign to an end. Perhaps unsurprisingly, three days later it was announced that Stewart would drive for McLaren in the 1972 CanAm series. If you can’t beat them…
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