Inter Europol Competition will bring a new and exciting combination to the European Le Mans Series 2022.
David Heinemeier Hansson, Pietro Fittipaldi and Fabio Scherer will share an ORECA 07 Gibson in the LMP2 category.
Danske Heinemeier Hansson will return to racing, after sitting out most of 2021, with only a single guest appearance at Copen Historic Grand Prix, as the only race for the IT entrepreneur. He has done quite a lot of racing with an LMP2 car, in both pre- and post 2017 spec. He has previously done a single ELMS round, where he raced for Team Project 1 Porsche in Barcelona 2019, prior to his FIA WEC 2019/20 run of three races with that team.
Fittipaldi has previously been in and around sportscar racing, but that hasn’t been the most enjoyable part of the career for the Brazilian. He was substituting for Renger van der Zande at DragonSpeed, when they raced in LMP1. He ended up with a massive crash at Spa Francorchamps, which cost him several broken bones, and an Indy 500 start, since he wasn’t able to recover in just a few weeks. He was back in sportscar racing at the 2021 ELMS season opener for G-Drive Racing. But that was the only race of the year, with the two parties ending the deal, with him putting full focus on his HAAS F1 reserve role, which previously gave him a couple of starts at the end of 2020, with Romain Grosjean being injured.
Fabio Scherer got his LMP2 debut in 2021, when he raced for United Autosports in the FIA World Endurance Championship. The Swiss driver had the big advantage of being a Silver-ranked driver. The now-former DTM driver is now upgraded to Gold, and he no longer fits into that constellation. Last weekend, he raced for High Class Racing at the 24 hours race in Daytona. That race didn’t end as hoped, with the team having to retire after two big crashes in the morning hours.
Photo: JJ Media
Inter Europol Competition has been a long time competitor in the ELMS, and jumped into the FIA WEC LMP2 in 2021. That resulted in their ELMS LMP2 outfit being moved to FIA WEC, leaving only the LMP3 cars in Europe, which has been their core programme for many years. But the FIA WEC part of the team has asked for more support and knowledge of the car and the tires, which the ELMS part of the team will be able to add.
The team will also put in a 24 Hours of Le Mans 2022 entry with the same three drivers, but this is a very tough task, since a lot of teams already have an entry for the race – including IE with their FIA WEC car already represented. But they have a possibility to claim an automatic entry, when the Asian Le Mans Series is being run in the next couple of weeks.
Other than the LMP2 car with number 43, there will be two LMP3 cars with the classic numbers 13 and 14 in the European Le Mans Series 2022. The season starts on 17 April at Circuit Paul Ricard near Le Castellet in France.
