“There were a number of reasons why we went into the Formula A series in 1973”, explained Mark Donohue in his autobiography The Unfair Advantage. “American Motors was interested in getting into a series where they were more competitive than the Matador was in NASCAR. At the same time, Sunoco liked Formula A because it involved real open-wheel race cars that burned gasoline – unlike USAC cars which burned alcohol. And it looked to us like an easy way to pick up some wins. All we had to do was buy a competitive chassis, stuff our proven AMC 302-inch Trans-Am motor in it, and go out and collect the money – or Roger would, at least.
“I didn’t know much about the series, but Don Cox was going to Europe for us, and he could look at the various chassis that were available. McLaren didn’t have one. Trojan was going to, but they weren’t ready yet. March offered one that Cox didn’t like. So we ended up back at Lola, where Broadley was building a Formula A chassis that looked like a winner.
“Fitting our AMC motor in the standard Chevrolet engine space turned out to be a hassle. Cox handled the engineering and packaging, and Karl Kainhofer went to England to help get everything together right. The big problems were that the AMC motor had its distributor and oil pump in the way at the front, the water pump stuck out more, and it needed a different dry-sump pump mount. But Eric had always done very well for us, so by the time I saw it everything looked about right. It was even painted Sunoco blue at the factory.
“Of course, the first thing to do was to take the car to the skidpad. I figured it would be easy to get it into shape. We would select the right springs and anti-roll bars, tweak the motor and wings, go to the races, unload the car from the trailer, and win all the money – and then walk off into the sunset”.
Of course, Donohue was just joking, sort of. From the time he joined Penske racing in 1966, he never took the attitude that a few tweaks here and there would make them winners. As he learned about race car dynamics, chassis set-up, aerodynamics, so he spent more time perfecting each race car Penske built, and knew exactly what he wanted from a new car. And he and Penske were successful in most racing arenas they entered, including Indy, Can-Am, the Trans-Am, and, to a lesser extent, NASCAR. Their success wasn’t always immediate, but, eventually, they usually found a way. So they entered a new series with the attitude that they were there to win, and that they expected to win.
They’d already dabbled a little in F5000, between 1969 - 1971 with a Lola T190, and T192 that had a Chevy planted in the back. Donohue didn’t take much interest in Formula A. He only focused on the categories Penske raced in, and the Penske team had a busy year in 1973, running USAC, Can-Am, and NASCAR, but he rightly felt they could run a car that was the equal of anything out there.
Donohue first tested the Lola on a skidpad, and found he couldn’t dial out the cars inherent understeer, no matter how soft he tried to make the front, and how stiff he made the rear. He then moved to Riverside, and could find no solution. Things went from bad to worse when he retired to his motel, worn out from going straight from a 500 mile NASCAR race to testing the Lola, and while he caught up on his sleep, Karl Kainhofer and Haig Alltounian worked on the car in the Goodyear garage at the track, where an errant spark ignited some fuel, which then set some nearby tyres alight, and suddenly the beautiful Lola was burnt to a crisp.
To Donohue, this was something of a blessing, given the teams other commitments, but some time later, Roger Penske announced the team would indeed run F5000, being pushed along by AMC. So the team acquired another T330, and set about preparing it. Donohue had Penske team member John Woodard test the chassis’ torsional rigidity, which was found to be quite adequate, although a couple of extra braces were added.
They then made some suspension geometry changes, and built a new rear wing, and went testing again, only to find the understeer remained. Donohue then figured the front track was too narrow, so the team widened the suspension. That didn’t work either. In the end, the team had to take the car as it was to Mid Ohio for its debut race, as agreed between AMC and Roger Penske.
Donohue was 4sec off pole, and eventually finished 3rd, struggling throughout with understeer. This was incredibly frustrating for him, as he was used to being able to tune a car to his liking, but the Lola just wouldn’t respond to anything he did. As he noted in The Unfair Advantage, “Brett Lunger was there, and at the time he was running fastest he came to me and said, “This is really great racing, isn’t it? We have great cars, and we’re having a great time”. I just nodded my head and thought, “Brett, these cars are shitboxes, and when you get in a nice one, you’re really going to go a lot faster”. We had no more time to test, so we just kept going from race to race, getting nowhere”.
Someone suggested to Donohue that he should try running without the locked diff, as the other F5000 teams did, but this just didn’t seem right to him. He came to the conclusion that larger front tyres would help, and so fitted a pair of rear Goodyear Formula B tyres. This immediately made a difference to the car, drastically reducing the understeer. He then tried running the original smaller front tyres, and fitting an unlocked diff, and this set-up proved almost as good, but opted for the larger fronts and locked diff.
The team took the car to Atlanta, where Donohue finished 2nd. He followed that with a 6th at Pocono, and rounded out the 1973 season with a 2nd at Kent. The Lola was now a much nicer car to drive, but the team ran out of time to turn it into a winner.
In the end, Donohue came to the conclusion that the AMC motor, being approx. 45kg heavier than the Chevys the other teams were using, was messing with the handling, and it took them so long to find a way around the problem, they ran out of time to make the car a winner. The extra weight also affected the cars acceleration and top speed.
For Donohue, it was one of the more frustrating projects he’d been involved with, and made him question his future as a race driver. “I learned a great deal about cars from that Lola – even though it almost killed me. When we were running way behind, I was totally distraught, although it didn’t seem to bother Roger so much. He said to just keep working and we’d get there eventually. But I wasn’t satisfied with running third – I wanted to win. Maybe I was spoiled, but going to a track knowing that you’re going to be twelve miles per hour slow on the straightaway is not my idea of professional racing. It began to make me feel that it might be time to start thinking about retiring”.
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Originally Posted by Steve Holmes
