Lola established itself in the early 1960s as one of Britain's leading small-volume racing car manufacturers, building single-seaters for Formula Junior, Formula 3, Formula 2, and sports cars for endurance racing. The company went on to dominate several categories including Formula 5000 and CART Indycar racing, and won the 1966 Indianapolis 500 with Graham Hill at the wheel of a Lola. Despite this breadth of success across decades, Broadley was cautious about committing Lola's own resources to Formula One as a works constructor.
Lola's first involvement in the World Championship came in 1962 when it supplied the Lola Mk4 to Reg Parnell's Bowmaker-Yeoman Racing Team, with John Surtees and Roy Salvadori driving. The car's debut was immediate encouragement: Surtees claimed pole position in the first World Championship race, and points were scored throughout the year. However, race victories in Grands Prix eluded the team. Bowmaker withdrew its funding after the season, Parnell continued with the cars on a private basis into 1963, and privateer Bob Anderson scored the Mk4's last win in the non-championship 1963 Rome Grand Prix before Lola withdrew from the category.
In 1967 Lola collaborated with Honda Racing and John Surtees on the design of a new Formula One car. Honda's original chassis design was abandoned as overweight; a 1966 Lola Indianapolis monocoque, the T90, was used as the structural basis. The resulting Honda RA300, which Lola designated the T130, was unofficially dubbed the Hondola by the press. It was sufficiently light and powerful to win the 1967 Italian Grand Prix, Surtees driving.
Graham Hill, struggling to find competitive drives late in his career, established his own team with Embassy cigarette sponsorship. After an unsuccessful 1973 with a customer Shadow, Hill commissioned his own cars from Lola. The T370 was largely derived from contemporary Formula 5000 practice and was developed by Andy Smallman into the Hill GH1 in 1975. The programme ended in tragedy when Hill, Smallman, Tony Brise, and several other team personnel died in an air crash in November 1975.
The Haas Lola programme was among the more ambitious privateer efforts of the mid-1980s. Funded by the American conglomerate Beatrice Foods and operated by experienced team manager Teddy Mayer, the project attracted Alan Jones out of retirement to drive alongside Patrick Tambay for the full 1986 season. Neil Oatley designed the car. The name Lola was attached largely because Carl Haas was Lola's US concessionaire, and Broadley's involvement was minimal. A works Ford turbocharged engine was promised but did not arrive until 1986, with older Hart four-cylinder units used in the interim. Car, engine, drivers, and sponsors all created difficulties, and the team folded after the 1986 season. Ecclestone eventually purchased the team's factory in Colnbrook.
A more sustained indirect connection came through the Larrousse and Calmels team, which ran Lola-based chassis from 1987. Starting with a Cosworth-powered car derived from Lola's F3000 technology, the French team built a steady presence in naturally aspirated Formula One, attracting Lamborghini V12 power from 1989. Drivers Éric Bernard and Aguri Suzuki achieved decent results once Chris Murphy's design was properly developed. The programme faced turbulence after Didier Calmels's arrest, and a significant controversy arose when the FIA stripped the team of all its 1990 Constructors' Championship points because the cars had been entered as Larrousses but were in technical and legal terms Lolas. This moved Ligier up the standings and awarded them benefits from the FIA — an outcome that remained contentious.
The Scuderia Italia programme marked another chapter of difficulty for Lola-badged machinery. The Italian team had achieved reasonable results with Dallara chassis but turned to Lola for 1993, pairing the T93/30 with customer Ferrari engines. Both Michele Alboreto and Luca Badoer struggled to qualify regularly. Upon first driving the car in pre-season testing at Estoril, Alboreto, a five-time Grand Prix winner, reportedly told the team's senior engineer "We're dead." Badoer's seventh place in the attritional 1993 San Marino Grand Prix represented the season's best result. The team withdrew before the final two races and subsequently merged elements of its operation with Minardi.
Lola's sole true works Formula One entry was the MasterCard-sponsored programme of 1997, and its failure was catastrophic. Lola had intended to enter in 1998, but sponsorship pressure from MasterCard caused the team to advance the debut by a year. The cars had never been tested in a wind tunnel before arriving in Australia for the opening race, an oversight that was by the mid-1990s considered almost unthinkable. The custom V10 engine commissioned from Al Melling was not ready, and the cars raced with underpowered Ford Cosworth ECA V8s. The results were disastrous; the cars were no quicker than Lola's own Formula 3000 machinery and were comprehensively outpaced by every rival. After the Australian Grand Prix, MasterCard withdrew its sponsorship. The cars appeared at the Brazilian Grand Prix but did not turn a wheel, and the team folded. Shortly afterwards, Lola Cars as a whole entered receivership and was saved only through a rescue purchase by Martin Birrane.
Lola's Formula One record reflects the fundamental difficulty the company experienced translating its success in other categories into the most competitive and politically complex form of the sport. As a chassis supplier to customer teams, Lola produced cars that scored points across multiple decades. As a works constructor, only the peripheral involvement in the Hondola and the long Larrousse relationship produced meaningful results. The 1997 collapse effectively ended Broadley's era at the company and altered its trajectory permanently.