Asian Le Mans Series, or in short Asian LMS, has their interim calendar for Season 3 ready.
On the first draft we saw five dates, but on the latest version it’s reduced to four events.
The season starts on the final weekend of October at Zhuhai in China, before Fuji in Japan, Buriram in Thailand, and then the season finale at Sepang in Malaysia in the first week of February.
Asian LMS is run by ACO, where they are trying to get sports car racing into Asia. The winners will get an entry for Le Mans, four months after the season finale, which makes several teams to go to Asia, when the ELMS season is over.
During the first season we saw four LMP2 teams, three LMP3 teams, two CN teams and 13 GT cars participated, during four race meetings. Unfortunately there were less than ten participants at some of the rounds.
Photo: JJ Media
For Season 2 there was a good improvement on the numbers, with still four LMP2 teams, but ten LMP3 team, one CN team and 18 GT cars.
There are naturally some Asian teams participating, but also European teams like Algarve Pro Racing, Race Performance, Tockwith Motorsports and ARC Bratislava.
The series was the one that gave DC Racing interest in the LMP racing, where they participated with a single LMP3 car in the 2015/16 season, before participating in a full FIA WEC season with the Signatech Alpine team during the 2016 season. For the 2016/17 season they added Jackie Chan to the team name, and is now an double entrant in WEC with 2 cars. They were only an hour away from winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall! Instead, they finished second and third overall, and a 1-2 in the LMP2 category.
Clearwater Racing also had their introduction to ACO racing through Asian LMS, where they have participated in both seasons so far, before they went on the FIA WEC wagon for the 2017 season in the GTE Am category.
Photo: JJ Media
The 2017/18 entry list hasn’t been released yet, but the goal is to pass 30 cars again, with a high average over the full season.
The races are 4-hours races, with a possibilty that one of the rounds will run a bit longer. The full calendar looks like this:
October 27-29 – Zhuhai (China)
December 1/3 – Fuji (Japan)
January 11/13 – Buriram (Thailand)
February 2/4 – Sepang (Malaysia)
