B-K Motorsports' Mazda-Powered Lola LMP2, Dissected

For some of us, it’s a rare treat in life when someone has no choice but to put up with us. And that’s exactly the situation I’ve found myself in with the B-K Motorsports team, who’s going to have to put up with me being underfoot as their tagalong reporter all weekend long! It’s a good thing, because it means I can bring you these rare shots of their Le Mans Prototype car in pieces. The powerplant is a turbocharged 4-cyl purpose-built Mazda race engine, in contrast to many of the other LMP-class cars, which run small V8s. The suspension’s fully adjustable, with an entire front-end exoskeleton used to control ride height, spring rate, and the like: camber is adjusted with modular plates which can be swapped out to make changes. Downforce is adjusted by tweaking various body structures, including the ribs on the nose, the fender louvers (that entire insert can be changed out), and of course, the rear spoiler. It sounds pretty clanky firing up, but that’s just the straight-cut gears crashing around in the rear-mounted gearbox. Warming up, the car sounded good, but unfortunately, our Mazda engine blew itself up on the track during practice this afternoon! I felt an ominous shiver: my diesel Escort is also running a 4-cyl Mazda motor, and I haven’t yet fired it up since having it completely apart. Fortunately, B-K has two complete spare motors—wish I could say the same for my project!—so we’ll have to see what’s in store for them this weekend, running on one of the backups. Best of luck, guys! More pics after the jump.