Moral of the story: Don't let a company with no knowledge of motorsport be your title sponsor

“They had a rookie in one seat and a tosser in the other.” Couldn’t have said it better myself

Yeah, real smart to force a team to do everything in 4 months to enter a season when the next year the rules change and they have to redesign the car from the ground up. This is the typical executives decision made by people that have no idea what they are doing.

I worked for Lola when Eric Broadley decided to take the company back into F1. The deal with Mastercard was a handshake deal done in early November 1996, the whole project was a disaster from the start. The car didn't see a wind tunnel until the Saturday of Melbourne qualiy, yes that's right it was designed old school by artistic sculpting of the model and then parts were made before the wind tunnel had even been fired up it was ridiculously tight/impossible. The whole project was doomed to fail, sadly it was the end of Lola Cars ltd. until Martin Birrane bought the company and than continued to run it as a hobby until he ran out of will power/money to fund it. The car only did a test in Silverstone and it was so bad the exhaust was softening the rear suspension which meant the car couldn't be driven in a straight line (until it was fixed!). As you said though, it was an impossible task to get a car designed from November and built and competitive in March, half the car was a F3000 car.

Still remember this gem of a quote from Martin Brundle. Murray Walker: People here are really debating whether Ricardo Rosset is Formula 1 material... Martin: That isn’t much of a debate Murray... Doubt he’d get away with it now which is a shame, I miss the more brutal honesty of Brundle.

I think they would be good if they enter in 1998. MasterCard screwed it up

Mastercard: *Shoots Lola by setting an impossible goal* Mastercard: "Who could have done this?"

i almost feel bad for the team, they were set up to fail from the start.

This reminds me of an Indycar story In 2019 there was a startup team called Juncos Racing, and they had 1 car. The week before the Indy 500, the team loses their sponsorships. They barely make qualifying (I think they pushed Alonso out of the race). 2 days before the race, the driver crashes in practice. They now have no money or car. Because they looked like a Cinderella story waiting to happen, the team manages to get some sponsors and fix their car. Everyone is excited to see how they do. They crash out about a quarter into the race.

They were 113% from the pole time. Getting on for Life levels of poorness.

Honestly just recently got into f1 and your videos make me love the racing world even more. Keep up the good work. From Dublin, Ireland

As a South African your Zuma joke had me crying laughing. Shot for that one.

i am italian, did you know that "Sospiri" means "sigh"? Now you do.

The no air box thing in 1995 wasn’t illegal and actually was intentional - the initial plan for 1995 post-San Marino was to ban air boxes and downsize the engines to 3 litres to reduce powers but the teams got them to eliminate the air box ban since the engine downsize would be enough - it wasn’t but then they started doing other things to slow the cars down.

Ur gonna explode in 2020,amazing content!

The Bill Clinton line really threw me off

Love the old-school style graphics for the qualifying times! Your videos showed up in my recommendations and I'm really enjoying your style!

‘Heinz-Herald Hopeless’ XD

I would have loved to see what happened if Mastercard allowed them to enter in 1998 as planned. That was the year of the new regs, with skinny cars and grooved tyres. It would have mixed the order up a bit and given Lola more of a chance. And they wouldn't have been stuck with that awful Ford V8.

That Stroll burn was top shelf 😂

been binge watching your channel today, good luck on the 2020 my dudes

You remind me of a NASCAR KZfaqr named S1apSh0es. He basically talks about the past world of NASCAR in a mini documentary style and blew up in mid-2019. I see something similar to your channel in 2020.

The Lola’s make the 2019 Williams seem like a Rokitship! Look, I’m sorry but this quarantine has got me slowly turning insane

Wow, this video solves the mystery confused me for years. I was a toddler in 97, and I saw this mastercard team in debut show. I must admit I kind liked the paint scheme of the team, so I really anticipated to see them in racing. I missed the opening race and found them not there when started watching from the second Grand Prix. For years I have not known why they disappeared, till today, thanks so much.

Honestly mate, I am binge watching your videos. The content is purely amazing. You are absolutely brilliant and these videos seems like something that was made by a 500k+ youtuber. just subscribed, keep up the good work!

4:27 - ROFL!! Thanks for the easter egg - your subs went up by 1. love from everyone in Cape Town, ZA.

When you consider that they basically had the same engine that your local taxi driver had under the bonnet of their Mondeo, they didn't do too badly, really...

*On the warm up lap* Lola: I cant believe it we are only 5 seconds behind this lap!

I remember i was a stupid kid at the time drooling over the blitz of f1... and i was a jacques villneuve fan if you can believe that... so i bought this paper that came with a brochure presenting the new f1 season... and they had the teams and tracks listed... this sort of thing was amazing before the era of the internet... and i noticed this team listed there but i never got to see them in a race... still memorable tho :)

These videos are hilarious. Keep up the awesome work!

Damn dawg. Your videos are great! I love the quick little flashes you do. Beat around the bush *george bush 2 pops up.* Hilarious.

Recently discovered this channel you deserve more notice!

Your videos are class mate, keep this up and this could be your career if it isn’t already

Discoveres your channel 2 days ago at I believe 2500 subs, now you are already over 5k. Keep it up man!

Cheers mate, v much enjoyed! "Bodywork that crumples if you so much as look at it" brilliant!

How the heck do you only have 5k subs? The quality of your content and delivery are worth many times that!

Love these videos. I just subscribed. Thanks a lot and keep the vids coming.

Just realized he uses bitmojis in his animations

Thanks for this. Added to my list of "F1 teams I'd never heard of". :)

Best channel I’ve come across in a very long time!

I just realized I watched your first video a while ago and thinking what shit mic you had. Congrats dude I'll see you at 100k

Great channel!! You’ll hit 100k subs by the end of 2020 👌🏼

Since lola in my country means grandma.... Mastercard Grandma 😅😅😅

These videos are awesome. Please keep making content.

Subbed at 13900. This is going to get big, wait for it

I found your channel today! I've been bingewatching all day, and it's amazing to see that only today you went from like 7000 subs tot 8250 at this moment. You're going to explode man! Enjoy your christmas and keep it coming!

Hi Josh. I’m a recent subscriber, and I just wanted to say I’m a big fan. I love your knowledge of the sport, and your sense of humour to go with your knowledge. BTW, will there be a WTF video for Heinz-Harold Hopeless?

This is awesome keep these vids commin

This is the second video of yours I've seen and I'm loving it. Please can you leave the captions on screen a little longer? I can't read them before they vanish. Keep up the awesome work. All the best for 2020.

I appreciate the Chillhop songs in the background🙏🏽

Wow I can’t believe you are the one who made the Andrea moda video! You have definitely evolved & it’s been a long time since I watched that

Awesome Channel! New subscriber here mate! 👊💪👍

Love your channel and you so much

This is easing my winter break misery. You are going to do well, trust me.

You're really underrated, subbed and turned on the bell

I feel like a safety car would mean Lola would barely be able to keep up.

I’m rewatching your videos seeing there’s no F1 😭😭😭😭😏 Great content, I hope you’ll do a What the *quack* happened to Pastor Maldonado

As a South African. I appreciate the Jab at Zuma.

So lola build a 2019 williams😂

Josh really loving your vids, totally awesome, yes these were worse than Moda imho completely agree - I also remember the cutting comments of Brundle and Walker, too really funny! possibly Fondmetal is also worse than Moda? what dya think?

When I started to watch this video you had 16.000 Subs, now you have 17.200. Damn Congratulations

To think Williams was a real competitor at one point is insane

Great channel.

Mate amazing content and please make a video about "wtf happened to ricardo rosset"

This sucks because that livery looked so good in 1997

I never expected to see the NRL mentioned in an F1 video

That 1.5 years old Xbox 360 avatar of Josh looks weirdly unsettling now. (But that's fine. Shows how much the channel improved!)

Following before this channel boom

I remember Rosset turning up at Tyrell in 1998 and failing to beat the 107% time on more than one occasion. Even as a 10-year-old boy, I remember thinking I could drive faster than him.

Aww, Heinz-Harald ❤️😭

I work in F1 and I think your videos are funny af😂😂😂😂😂😂

I love your Aussie content. Ie Daly Cherry-Evans backflip and DJR Team Penske FGX Falcon

I just wanted to say keep the videos coming. You make me laugh every time #Fuuuunnddinnng! especially made me laugh.

Still one of the coolest liveries in F1 though...

good to hear what actually happened

Interesting. At the same time in 1997, Lola, which had been the dominant car in the USA's CART Indy Car series, came out with a new car that was more than one second a lap slower than the Reynards and Hondas. Early in the season at least two top teams bailed on the Lolas causing a lotto embarrassment. I wonder if trying to develop both of these cars at the same time was a big factor in both cases.

What’s the name of the song that’s in the outro? The song at the end is really catchy. I love this channel.

Ye this channel is going places aight.

The last josh revell bitmoji video

If Eric Broadley had put his foot down and told Master card "No, we will not enter in 1997. This is simply not possible. We are only prepared to join in 1998 and if you have an issue with that, we will go find sponsorship elsewhere." Yeah they'd be back in that dire financial situation but getting money should've been the least of his worries. Ensuring his F1 project would be able to make it to the grid for 1998 or 1999 should've been more important and im sure he could've found at least a few other sponsors willing to fund his outfit. Instead, he jumped at the first chance he got and when the demands were made, he whimpered and tried to do the impossible

They made their first and only race appearance at Melbourne but sadly both failed to qualify and before Brazilian Grand Prix the team collapsed and were gone for good

Lola even tried their hand in rowing, buying out boat manufacturer Aylings and giving the promise of bringing F1 tech to rowing. Then promptly killing the company because they had no clue what they were doing.

Although Mastercard helped lead to the demise of the team, I put the majority of the blame on Lola's leadership. When it comes to experts of something technical working with an outside company providing sponsorship or any sort of money, it's the absolute unquestioned responsibility of the technical experts to convince the sponsors of the realities of that technical thing. Not in how it _works_ , but in what the results will be if they try to half-ass it. It's clear to me, as someone who has had to have some pretty blunt and straightforward talks with higher-ups in organizations who were naively optimistic about something (completely unrelated industry to motorsports), that what Mastercard was asking of Lola was not simply a bad idea, but would result in a complete failure of all of the investments already put forward. Lola's leadership needed to beat Mastercard over the head with a trashcan lid until this message was fully received. This did not happen, and the team failed because of the ineptitude of Lola's leadership. If you're a manager, you have to know when to be exceptionally blunt with people. If Lola's managers had managed to do this, they might not have closed as quickly as they did. Mastercard made a stupid decision. Lola's leadership failed to correct that stupid decision.

Apparently Lola will be back in business this year, so that's neat.

Cracking livery on that thing though.

Crazy to think that Lola is coming back to racing in Formula E.

Rest In Peace Lola, they were a pretty awesome company

I was pleasantly drifting off to sleep with this on, and then that damn beep at the end woke me right back up. Not cool!

My brother did some work experience for Lola in Huntingdon when he was a teenager. By that point the company weren't far from disappearing. This story is so sad and it is totally Mastercard's fault.

MasterCard: "so, we want the team on the grid for 1997, good? Good" Lola: "ugh, fine" Lola, internally: "SHIT! WE ONLY HAVE CART TECHNOLOGY! WE SAID WE'D DEVELOP A V10 IN HOUSE!"

Interesting video, well presented although the bitmoji character looks really tacky.

I see what you did there with Zuma. Glad to make fun of him.

Nice story, didn't know about that

You mention Rosset... his Monaco crash is perhaps the greatest act of plebbery I have ever seen.. also honourable mention Esteban Tuero.

DCE backflipping turned out to be a good thing though. I mean, if you had a choice between playing for Manly and playing for the Titans..... One club has played in at least one Grand Final every decade from the 1950s. And they've won at least one premiership every decade since the 1970s. They are also the only pre-1982 club never to finish last (though they have gotten close on occasion). The other is in Australia's national sports team graveyard and is likely never to win anything other than having the best small stadium.

My friends dad used to work for them and he said the car was always bad

The real reason the '95 T95/30 didn't have an airbox was because the FIA was proposing to ban them after the Senna accident to reduce speeds. There was a lot of speculation about regulation changes like that when the car was being developed, which is why it looks so odd. They kept trying to change separate bits to make it legal.

So this is how Toro Rosso will look this year?

What did I get straight after watching this video? An ad for Mastercard, of course.

That cherry evens titans reference 😂