The first true Group C race car - the Lola T600

For me, the first true Group C car wasn't actually made for Group C, but for the American IMSA GTP. The Lola T600, with it's low-slung body, wheel spats and huge venturi tunnels was considered to be a completely radical design at the time, and the Porsche fanboys saw it as yet another half hearted attempt to beat the all-conquering Porsche 935.

Two of the Interscope T600's, along with the "It's Miller Time" T600 and a Fitzpatrick Porsche 935 K3 at Mid Ohio in 1982.

To be honest, the Porsche fanboys were rightly justified in thinking this, as the 935 had a habit of beating pretty much anything, including the purpose-built prototypes like the Mirages and even Porsches own 936. The two biggest strengths that the Porsche 935 had was it's huge amount of power (more than 800hp in some cases), and the huge amount of development that had gone into it over it's lifetime. The T600 lacked both of these, with a small block Chevy V8 that put out about 600hp, and almost no development time before it's first race.

An even bigger problem for both Lola and the T600's first driver Brian Redman was that Lola had pretty much put all of its money into designing this car, and if the T600 didn't win its first race at Laguna Seca the company would go broke. No pressure, Mr. Redman. Luckily it did win its first ever race, and the result was a total of 18 customer Lola T600 chassis being made, four of which were T616's made for smaller engines, and two were T610's that were made specifically for Group C.

Lola Mazda T616 powered by a Mazda 13b rotary.

Lola T610 at Le Mans on 1982, possibly going through the esses after the Dunlop bridge. 

The key to it's success was the massive Venturi tunnels that ran from the rear of the cockpit to the tail of the T600. In fact, the tunnels were so massive that the suspension components had to be placed right next to the wheels instead of near the centre line. Thanks to these tunnels the T600 had a huge amount of downforce, allowing it to just sail past the 935's in the twistier sections of track.

Here you can see the tops of the enormous Venturi tunnels, finishing at about the height of the rear tires. Image taken from trackthoughts.com.

However, it wasn't until the 1982 IMSA Daytona Grand Finale that the Porsche 935's really had the wind blown up them by a T600. Team Interscope purchased three T600's from Lola to replace their ageing 935 K2 and K3's, and entered two of these in the Grand Finale. One of them was powered by the conventional small block Chevy V8, but the other, driven by Danny Ongais, had a 3.4L twin turbo Chevrolet V6 that absolutely blew the doors off the Porsches. While it was running, the twin turbo T600 was just unbeatable through both the twisty bits and the long oval sections of Daytona. Rather unfortunately for Ongais, the right rear tire blew after the half-way point of the race, tearing apart oil lines and resulting in the retirement of the car, but the other V8 T600 soldiered on and eventually won the race, also at the hands of Ongais.

The #0 Lola ran the turbo V6 Chevy engine, whereas the #00 Lola ran the regular small block Chevrolet V8.

The T600 had a very successful racing career, although it was a comparitively short one as more advanced cars like the March 84 and the Porsche 956 entered the fray only a couple of years later. And while I don't doubt that other manufacturers were thinking about using Venturi tunnels at the same time as the guys at Lola, it was Lola that put their neck on the line and got them into practice first without without any testing and with a comparatively underpowered engine.

Disclaimer: I take no credit for any of the photos shown here. They have been used only for illustrative purposes and all credit goes to their respective owners.