The Lola B03/51 is one of the Lola Cars entries the open record knows by name, and by little else. That is not nothing: a name in the catalogue is where a car's story starts to be recoverable.
How it came about
The Lola B03/51 is an open-wheel formula racing car, designed, developed and built by Lola for the Japanese Formula Nippon championship series, in 2003. It was powered by a naturally aspirated 3,000 cc (180 cu in) Mugen MF308 engine that produced around 550 hp (410 kW) @ 13,500 rpm.
The hardware
500-550 hp is the published figure. It weighs 590 kg. Work it out per tonne and you get about 847 horsepower — hypercar territory, where the limiting factor is the tyre, not the engine. The wheelbase is 3000 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: its successor was the Lola B06/51. Its Lola Cars stablemates include the Hill GH1 and the Lola B02/50.