When the entry list for this years 24 Hours of Le Mans was announced on Friday last week, there was a total of nine teams on the reserve list.
The teams in seventh and eighth on the reserve spots have decided to pull their entries, since they don’t believe it’s possible to receive a call anyway.
IDEC Sport had the seventh spot on the list with their car #27, but since they already have their #48 on the actual entry, they have chosen only to focus on that one car for the 24 hours race. The team has entered both cars for the European Le Mans Series, so they will have to choose which three drivers they want for Le Mans. Team owner Patrice Lafargue is named as the driver in one of the cars, while his son Paul and Paul Loup Chatin are named in the other. It’s not impossible that those three names will be the ones, on the side of the car at the French classic in June.
Photo: JJ Media
A name that won’t be present at any cars, is Miro Konopka. He is the team owner and driver of the ARC Bratislava car, which received eighth reserve spot of the 24 hours race. Shortly after the list was made public, the team send out a press release stating that they were very puzzled not to be on the entry list, and on top of that, be so far down the reserves list. The announcement was made that they would no longer focus on Le Mans, but instead turn their attention to participating in the Asian Le Mans Series or the European Le Mans Series in the future.
It has become the norm over the last few years, that only very few, if any, of the reserves would receive a call to replace any of the 60 previously chosen teams. So it’s perfectly normal that the reserve cars quickly are dropping off the list, so there only will be a few left, when we get to May.
Since the start of the European Le Mans Series and the FIA World Endurance Championship, all 60 cars are already running, and not like in the past, were some teams only rolled out their car from the garage, in case they could collect enough sponsorship and find the right drivers. So the 60 cars have become very stable entries, and only sudden appearing issues can make one of the 60 teams pull out.
