Lola will be in the thick of the action when the new American Le Mans Series season kicks off with the 56th running of the Sebring Twelve Hours this weekend.
Kick starting Lola's 50th year as a motorsport constructor, both BK Motorsport and Intersport Racing will be battling it out against Audi, Peugeot, Acura and Porsche in the first big sportscar race of the 2008 season.
Intersport Racing heads in to its 10th season of running Lola designed and built sportscars, having run every example of Huntingdon built sportscars since 1999 when Jon Field and Martin Guimont debuted the Lola B98/10 Ford.
Since then the Dublin, Ohio based squad have entered the B2K/10, B2K/40, B01/60 Lola-MG, B05/40 LMP2 and this year the B06/10 Lola chassis in LMP1. The team have tasted success in Florida many times in the past with a total of four class podium finishes and two class wins.
These victories were achieved in 2002 for Jon Field, Michael Durand and Duncan Dayton with the Lola B01/60 LMP675 car and in 2006 when the Field's were joined by Liz Halliday in the LMP2 Lola B05/40. This year, Jon and his son Clint Field will be joined by Richard Berry in the AER powered Lola LMP1. The car will also run with the new cellulosic E85 race fuel, making it one of the most environmentally friendly Lola cars ever to have raced at Sebring.
BK Motorsports arrives at Sebring with renewed optimism after several encouraging pre-season tests with its Mazda powered Lola B07/46. Ben Devlin showed an impressive turn of speed at the official Sebring test in January and the team are all set to take the improvements into this week's practice and qualifying sessions. Over the winter the team has seen many changes to its LMP2 Lola-Mazda challenger.
While the drivers remain the same, the tyres have changed from Kumho to Yokohama and the look of the car is markedly different with support from BP ensuring a new striking livery for the team.
