Racing Team Turkey will once again enter the LMP2 category in the upcoming 2022 European Le Mans Series season.
The team, which is run with help from TF Sport and JOTA, made their prototype racing debut in 2021, with Salih Yoluc and Charlie Eastwood doing the full season, with two different third drivers on the car.
Yoluc and Eastwood will return on the 2022 crew, being joined by Jake Aitken as their new teammate.
Aitken has been a bit here, there, and everywhere. He has had the traditional way through the single-seater ranks, and has had success on pretty much every level. He did a single Formula 1 race for Williams, when George Russell had to jump into the Mercedes, when Lewis Hamilton contracted Corona in Bahrain in 2020. He raced at Spa 24 Hours in 2021, but had a massive accident, which send him to the hospital with a broken collarbone, which was a very lucky escape indeed.
The team will once again run in the LMP2 Pro/Am part of the championship, since Yoluc is a Bronze rated driver. The Turkish driver was accused by certain parts of the paddock, to be involved in a lot of incidents with many competitors throughout the 2021 season – but if it actually was him to blame or not, is hard for us to judge. Yoluc had primarily raced GT cars prior to 2021, where the collaboration with Aston Martin works driver Charlie Eastwood started.
The biggest success for the team in 2021, was when Logan Sargeant took Pole Position at Red Bull Ring – where he was just a reserve driver, and by beating all the professional drivers in the LMP2 category, in the same material.
The 2021 season ended abruptly on Saturday morning in Portimao, when Yoluc had contact with a GTE car, and damaged the ORECA 07 chassis so badly, that they couldn’t enter the race.
The European Le Mans Series 2022 starts at Circuit Paul Ricard on 17 April.