Prema Racing are definitely not doing things half-heartedly in sportscar racing.
The team made its FIA World Endurance Championship debut two weeks ago, where they were fighting for victory for several hours, until they were unlucky with their strategy, and the unpredictable Red-flag periods. The pairing for that outing was Lorenzo Colombo, Robert Kubica and Louis Deletraz.
They do, however, also run in the European Le Mans Series 2022, where they have collected three equally impressive drivers.
Juan Manuel Correa was the first to be announced, so he has been known for quite some time. Correa is one of the young, hugely talented drivers in single-seaters, but was slowed down by the horrible Formula 2 accident at Spa Francorchamps, where Antoine Hubert was killed, but also resulted in leg and back injury for Correa. He has fully recovered, and did return to Formula 3, doing the full 2021 season. He has the big advantage of being ranked Silver, i.e. the “weakest” link onboard the LMP2 car- but that is hardly a weak link at all!
Louis Deletraz will also be piloting the ELMS car, and brings loads of sportscar experience into the team. He was an LMP1 driver briefly for Rebellion Racing, prior to them shutting their programme in 2019, but he has raced plenty of LMP2 races as well, and is the defending ELMS LMP2 Champ – a title which he won with Team WRT.
They are a link to the third driver of the team as well – Ferdinand Habsburg. Habsburg raced for the Belgian outfit in the FIA World Endurance Championship in 2021, and is the defending LMP2 champ in that category. He also did the full ELMS season for Algarve Pro Racing, with a third place finish as the best result, claimed at the final round in Portimao. The noble Austrian racer has already shown his speed this year for Realteam by WRT at Sebring, two weeks ago, where he was close at grabbing Pole Position in the LMP2 category, but ended up 5th – right ahead of Robert Kubica in the Prema Orlen Racing car.
Prema Racing has a collaboration with Iron Lynx about their sportscar programmes, but has chose to race under their own name, in each of the categories.
The European Le Mans Series 2022 starts with two days of Prologue on 11 and 12 April at Circuit Paul Ricard, prior to the opening race being run on the very same track on 17 April.
