Analysis

Planetlemans analyzes the LMS season list

© Planetlemans – Gabriel Portos // The presence of Audi will boost the LMS

It’s been released. 50 cars (at least) it will be this year at the Le Mans Series with an overwhelming 31 season prototype entries. While most of it coincides with our previous analysis (see this link ) there are still a few surprises both on the presence and absence sides. Let’s go class by class briefly:

LMP1
The top class has 16 entrants, Audi (Capello-McNish and Prémat-Rockenfeller) and Peugeot (drivers TBD on Feb 15th) both with 2 cars are clearly the main attraction. Already announced as well had been Oreca-Courage (2 cars) and Pescarolo (Collard-Boullion and Primat-Tinseau), Henri fielding a third car (Nicolet-Faggionato-Hein) under the Saulnier Racing banner. Rollcentre will still be presenting a Joao Barbosa-Martin Short lineup after Stuart Hall is on one of two Creation cars (Hall-Pagneaud and Ortiz-Campbell Walter) equipped with the AIM engines. The Charouz Lola-Aston will be driven by Charouz and Muecke (Where’s Enge you might wonder? Answer two paragraphs below), clearly the second (Cytosport) car is not listed as a full season entry since it should go to the ALMS after June. The list is completed by Chamberlain Synergy (Evans-Berridge) and two Epsilon-Euskadi coupés with still unnamed drivers.

Notable absences: Lavaggi (will he do some races or even attempt a Le Mans entry?), Swiss Spirit and Arena (where’s that Zytek?)

LMP2
A very strong list of 16 cars, the 3 Porsche RS Spyders (Horag, van Merksteijn and Essex) with the well-known lineups, only one (Bruichladdich) Radical with Moseley-Greaves Jr., the WR-Zytek and the racing Box Lucchini all confirmed as reported previously. On the Zytek camp just one Barazi car (Barazi-Vergers) and the Trading performance car with Ojjeh-Gosselin-Schroyen. Lola has the Speedy coupé with Belicchi-Zacchia-Pompidou as well as open cars for RML, Quifel-ASM and a surprising Kruse Schiller car with a Mazda engine!!! (lineup is de Jean de Pourtales, Alex Mueller-Hideki Noda). A sole Saulnier Pescarolo and the Embassy 2-car team (Kane-Hughes and Haberfeld-Foster are announced as pairings) complete the LMP2 season list.

Notable absences: Pierre Bruneau, the “Danish” Zytek of Thyrring-Thiim and, of course, Binnie. Also LNT was very much expected to take part in this class but…

GT1
Just 5 cars with no Bouchut, Gardel, Gollin, Vosse… One Larbre Saleen (Makowiecki-Lunardi-Halliday), one IPB Spartak Lamborghini Murciélago (Kox-Rusinov), the Modena Aston with García and Enge and finally the two C6R Corvettes of Luc Alphand.

Notable absences: a second larbre Saleen

GT2
No Corvette and no Panoz among the 14 cars in this class. IMSA Matmut with 2 Porsche 997s as well as Felbermayr Proton . Farnbacher with a “hybrid” team: Nielsen-Simonsen-Westbrook on a Porsche, Ehret-Kaffer-Beltoise on a Ferrari. But they won’t be alone, James Watt will also have a Porsche and the Aston Martin Vantage as 2 car team. Spyker will be back with 2 works cars (Coronel-Dumbreck and Kelleners-Vassiliev) as well as one all-Swiss Speedy car for Chiesa-Camandona-Leuenberger. All Spykers will be Laviolette coupés rather than Spyders. Class champions Virgo with Bell-Bruni on a Ferrari as announced at Birmingham and JMB with a 2 F430 effort.

Notable absences: GPC (although last minute information from Italian websites gives them as returning to LMS), Villorba Corse, LNT, Markland, Ice Pol and Chad Peninsula.

It clearly looks as a cracking season in the prototype department, less so in the GT realm where GT2 should however offer still quite some good racing. Paul Ricard will start unveiling the clues for this championships which won’t be easy to predict….

Link to the full list