The driver rotation at Richard Mille Racing Team in the European Le Mans Series continues.
The third round of the ELMS will be run this weekend at Circuit Paul Ricard, with Sophia Flörsch and Beitske Visser sharing the Bordeaux red ORECA 07 Gibson #50.
The team was thrown into some troubled weeks, when Katherine Legge broke her leg ahead of the season start at Paul Ricard in the middle of July. She was supposed to be the experienced driver, and backbone in the effort, which was planned to consist of female drivers only.
They had to pull in Andre Negrao for the Paul Ricard race, with him being driver at Signatech Alpine Elf holdet in the FIA WEC. It’s also Signatech running the ELMS car for Richard Mille Racing Team. He was racing together with Tatiana Calderon at that race, where they claimed fifth in the LMP2, just shy of a minute from a podium position.
Photo: JJ Media
Beitske Visser was pulled into the car at Spa Francorchamps as the third driver, next to Calderon and Negrao. They managed to finish 6th amongst the LMP2 cars, only 25 seconds from a podium position, after four hours of racing.
Sophia Flörsch will be a new driver on the team this weekend. The young German was supposed to have run the full ELMS season, but then COVID-19 showed up, and created date clashes with her Formula 3 schedule at the first two ELMS rounds. There is actually a date clash again this weekend, but with Flörsch slated to drive at Le Mans in less than a months time, and still haven’t raced in a sportscar race, they have decided to give LMP2 priority over F3 this time around.
Katherine Legge returned to the USA last week, where she continues the recovery and training of her leg. There are not yet news regarding her Le Mans seat, and the chance of her competing or not – but the chances are getting slimmer and slimmer for each day.
Tatiana Calderon will be racing in the Japanese Super Formula series this weekend, so she can’t be at Paul Ricard.
It will be very interesting to see the pace of the inexperienced pairing of Flörsch and Visser this weekend, or if they can claim the same results as in the previous weekends.
