Krohn Racing was fastest in their Ligier JS P2 Nissan, when all the ELMS teams were testing at Paul Ricard in the south of France ahead of the season.
Olivier Pla was unsurprisingly the quickest man in the car – a car that Pla has been involved with and developed during all his years at OAK Racing, so is the manufactorer behind the Ligier LMP2 car.
All LMP2 cars were within 2,5 seconds of each other in the 2 days long test, which looks very good for the upcoming season.
In LMP3 Alex Brundle and United Autosport were fastest in their new Ligier JS P3 Nissan, but weirdly there was even bigger gaps in this field, even when nearly all teams run the same chassis. The reason behind that is the variation of driving talents is bigger in LMP3 than LMP2, where the demands on Driver Rankings are quite different.
AF Corse was fastest in GTE with their Ferrari F458 Italia nummber 51, piloted by Marco Cioci. He was followed by another 3 Ferrari’s before the only Porsche in the field driven by Renger Vande Der Zande was ahead of last years Champions, Formula Racing in their Ferrari. The 99 Beechdean Aston Martin was the slowest of the GTE cars.
Since our latest update on the series, 2 teams have decided to pull out.
The 2015 LMP2 Champions, Greaves Motorsport, has decided not to enter the Championship and instead focus on their FIA WEC programme. That also means that their 2nd entry for Le Mans has been withdrawn.
TDS Racing has pulled out their Aston Martin in GTE since they couldn’t find the budget to run a full season plus rent the car.
There is a lot of focus on average lap times in the ELMS championship. It’s more important to have 3 drivers with very similar lap times rather than 1 very fast driver. There are big ongoing discussions about driver rankings, since some professional drivers, who have previously won GP2 races and others, by mistake are ranked as Silvers.
We’re quite sure to hear more about that during the season, but let’s hope that it doesn’t have too big of an impact on the championship this year.
