Le Mans Series

The Brazilians at Interlagos…and more news

© Planetlemans - Marcel ten Caat

The Mil Milhas Brasil weekend is just over two weeks ahead and more and more details are becoming available. The number of cars that are set to race at the Interlagos circuit has gone up to twenty-three, with another JMB Racing Ferrari 430 GT2 being the latest addition to the entry list.

At this moment eleven Brazilian drivers are confirmed for their local race. JMB Racing will enter two fully-Brazilian Ferrari 430 GT2 cars with very familiar racing names. Former Fittipaldi and Arrows F1 driver Chico Serra will be racing one of the team’s cars, together with his son Daniel Serra (who raced in the Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup in 2005) and Francisco Longo. The other JMB Racing Ferrari will see GP2 Series veteran Alexandre Negrao Jr partnering his father Alexandre Negrao Sr, a Brazilian touring car legend, and Andreas Matteis.
The only local team that has entered so far, Derner Motorsport, will bring another Brazilian racing legend to the Le Mans Series, namely Raul Boesel. In 2005 he officially retired from racing after racing in F1, the Indy Racing League, CART and of course the World Sportscar Championship (in which he won the title in 1987), but he will be back behind the wheel at Interlagos. His team mates will be Flavio Figueiredo and Marcel Visconde, GT3 Brasil driver and Porsche Centre Sao Paulo owner.

The other two Brazilians that will be racing at Interlagos have both raced single seaters in Europe and the United States. Mario Haberfeld is best known for his time in the F3000 championship and the Champ Car World Series. He will join the Embassy Racing Radical SR9 alongside regular drivers Hughes and Manning. The other is Fernando Rees, who made his way up through the single-seater ranks from F3 up into F3000, where he suffered some broken vertebrae during a test. He will join the Aston Martin Racing Larbre team.

So we have had a look at the Brazilians that are so far entered for the final Le Mans Series race of the season, but what else is new?

The Spyker Squadron team will again have a different driver line-up. Spyker regular Peter Kox will be joined by Mike Hezemans, who scored a third place for the team in the penultimate round at Silverstone and 2007 Porsche Mobil1 Supercup driver Paul van Splunteren.

John Hartshorne has changed cars for the final round of the season. Instead of the Chad Peninsula Panoz Esperante he drove during the previous rounds of the season the Brit will join the Thierry Perrier Porsche squad for Interlagos.

And then James Watt Automotive. Paul Daniels will be joined by Porsche Mobil1 Supercup champion Richard Westbrook, Australian GT driver Bryce Washington and Danish all-rounder Allan Simonsen. Simonsen drove for the GT2 championship winning Virgo Motorsport team but because he missed the Silverstone round his team mate Rob Bell was declared the GT2 Drivers Championship winner. If Simonsen and the JWA Porsche can win at Interlagos Simonsen will be joint-champion.

Finally we have learned that the Interlagos organisers have a one-year contract with the Le Mans Series. After this years race the event will be evaluated and after that the Le Mans Series will announce if they will return to Brazil or not. A repeat of the Istanbul-drama where the first year was a mess and the organisers were forced to go there a second time will not happen.

Stay tuned as more news becomes available… Boa noite!

_{Marcel ten Caat - Planetlemans.com}