When the Asian Le Mans Series 2018/19 finale is run at Sepang International Circuit in one and a half weeks, the R24 team will have three brand new drivers in the car.
There has been several driver combinations of females, where Marie Iwaoka has been the fixed point during the first three races of the series. She was joined by Stephane Kox, Anna Inotsume and Sarah Bovy at various times, but now even Iwaoka has to jump out of the seat.
Katherine Legge, Michelle Gatting and Margot Laffite will be the three drivers in the Ligier JS P3 in Malaysia. The three drivers have never raced together, but especially Legge has a huge experience with different cars and teammates. She most recently raced a LMP3 car at the Michelin Encore at Sebring in November. Her full season job this year is for Meyer Shank Racing in an Acura GTD car in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
This will be the first time for Gatting and Laffite to race in a LMP3 car.
Margot Laffite is the daughter of the former Formula 1 driver Jacques Laffite, but has raced various GT and Touring Car series throughout the years.
Gatting has, despite her young age, quite a diverse experience. VW Scirocco Cup, Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland and Gulf 12 Hours are amongst the different series, where she has been racing. She furthermore has raced in both the Danish Thundersport Championship and Danish Supertourisme series in Denmark, but non of those cars are as fast as a LMP3 car – neither is her Kessel Racing Ferrari #83 GTE car, which was announced just shy of two weeks ago.
The Asian Le Mans Series finale is run on 22-24 February, and can be watched on the Asian Le Mans Series YouTube channel.