Lola Cars International Ltd welcomed the voice of Radio Le Mans and the ALMS, John Hindaugh, to Lola this week, in what was incredibly his first visit the factory. Recording features for the Midweek Motorsport programme on Globecast Radio, John took in all of Lola’s technical facilities and chatted to various members of the Lola staff. First stop on the tour was with Lola Chief Designer Julian Sole and aerodynamicist Dan Cox to talk through the upgrades to Lola’s LMP designs, the B07/40 LMP2 car and the B07/10 LMP1 car. Hindaugh was clearly impressed with the 45% scale LMP model which had just gone through its first Coupe spec testing in Lolas state-of-the-art windtunnel. Following on from the latest news on the LMP upgrades John was introduced to Chief Aerodynamicist, Phil Tiller. With experience at BAe systems and Jaguar F1, Phil is currently working on both motorsport and non-motorsport projects and overseeing an upgrade in CFD capability through a new partnership with technology giant AMD. Composites Manager Paul Rennie talked Hindaugh through the intricacies of Finite Element Analysis and explained how the car are designed to withstand colossal forces in the event of a major impact. Lunch was spent mulling over the possibilities for a superb season of ALMS action ahead with Lola Communications Manager, Sam Smith, Malcolm Cracknell from Dailysportscar.com and BK Motorsports Marcus Haslegrove. Following on from this was a meeting with Lola owner and Executive Chairman, Martin Birrane who reminisced about his own racing career and also looked ahead to the impending Lola LMP Coupe which will hit the tracks this Autumn. With more material than he knew what to do with the energetic sportscar super fan was away and uploading the features for that evenings programme, of which a podcast will be available via this link: www.0157.org For more details on quotes and news from the day please click on to: www.dailysportscar.com