While the BK Motorsport Lola-Mazda was undertaking its shakedown test at a sodden Snetterton earlier this week, more Lola LMP cars were in action in altogether sunnier climes as three teams headed to Valencia.

Chamberlain Synergy (B07/10) - pictured at Valencia above, RML (B05/40) and Binnie (B07/40) were all present for two days of intensive testing to get further data from the new 2007 aerodynamic upgrades.

For 2007 Lola have given a significant update to both its LMP1 and LMP2 designs. Under the guidance of Lola Chief Designer, Julian Sole the design team have spent several weeks in the 50% scale state-of-the-art windtunnel in Huntingdon fine tuning the new look package.

Chief Designer, Sole explained the philosophy of the changes, saying: “The big change is the aerodynamics, but we’ve also been working to improve reliability: you can always give yourself a better margin (for reliability) and we’ve been looking at the gearbox and a new differential.”

The major improvements to the LMP cars centres around improving overall efficiency rather than increasing maximum downforce. There has been a significant reduction I ride height sensitivity in all downforce configurations to expand the set-up window.

As well as these developments, Lola engineers have also been busy working on the next generation of LMP’s, the fabled coupe version, which is scheduled to hit the track this autumn. Lola’s senior aerodynamicist Phil Tiller explained the latest developments.

“The artist’s impression we released last year was just that, but we’ve been doing a lot of work on the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics), and we’ve got a short list of shapes for the closed car, which we’ve already put in the wind tunnel. We’ll soon narrow it down to a final shape in the wind tunnel.”

All three teams were happy with their running at Valencia and now aim to run for two days at the Paul Ricard track on March 25/26.