MG LOLA EX 257 SPORTS CAR
Le Mans 2002

This is the car run by the Knighthawk team in the 2002 Le Mans. Adrian Norman, Consumer Promotions Manager - Scalextric has informed me in 2003 that the Hot Wheels livery of the MG Works team in this race is not planned for the Scalextric range.

KnightHawk Racing, runner up in the 2001 American Le Mans Series' LMP 675 Championship, were the first privateer team to acquired the MG Lola 675 LMP. The car was similar to the MG Works cars except for choice of tyres with Avon being used.

The MG Lola was delivered to the team painted a high gloss black - one of KnightHawk's traditional three colors. In preparation for the 2002 Le Mans the team applied graphics to the car adding the team's two other colors - halloween-orange and silver to depict the team's theme - a soaring nighthawk.

The drivers were Steve Knight and Mel Hawkins, owners of Knighthawk and Duncan Dayton.

The car retired from the race during the 9th hour after completing 102 laps due to a spectacular fire that all but destroyed the team's only entry. Mel Hawkins was traveling the Mulsanne straights at high speed, when he was stunned to see a huge bolt of flame shoot right past him - from inside the cockpit - on his left side.
"I was on the straight, right between the first and second chicane, when all of a sudden a huge flame shot up the left side of the cockpit," said the suprisingly calm Hawkins. "I quickly looked in the rear-view mirror and saw huge flames coming at me from the back of the car. They came clear over my head - almost like an explosion - although I didn't feel or hear one. I never saw any smoke, or smelled any smoke - at all. I was probably about a quarter-mile past the first chicane, at a speed of about 150mph and all of a sudden it was just as if the car blew up! I pulled over as quickly as I could, and by the time I did get over there were absolutely no lights on in the car any longer. It was completely dark. I got out of the car as fast as I could."
 

Like the MG version the model is a very good likeness of the actual car, but this time some effort has been made to depict the helmet colours by painting a ring of silver around the top.

I have tided this ring up and added additional painted details to represent Steve Knight..

Just to confirm how realistic the car is Steve Knight sent this message of congratulations to Scalextric.
"I might confirm a few points, since I had the pleasure of seeing the car up (veeeerrrry) close while driving it", Steve wrote. "We designed the orange graphics to be reflective at night, and we ran them that way for all the night races. In some of the day races, we put on non-reflective graphics because they were less expensive, but most of the time we ran the reflective ones. The car did not have a dash. All the controls were on the steering wheel. The wheel itself had four computer read-outs on it which monitored hundreds of combinations of data. We could switch between "pages" and "screens" with just a push of a button. The wheel also had many buttons and multi-position switches on it to control everything from different engine maps, turbo boost levels, to the driver's drink bottle. It was literally a real handful. It looks like they have put my helmet on the driver, since my helmet was black with a silver stripe around the top and my suit was white on top. After looking at the model they sent me, I can say that Scalextric copied everything correctly. Scalextric did a superb job."

Steve Knight
KnightHawk Racing



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Last updated  06/03/2004