[LM24] Le Mans 2018 Entry List Speculation

[airbusA346]

Originally Posted by canaglia

Very likely JCDC will be the banner name for an OAK "official" effort at le mans, like they did in past with ESM and G-drive.

From DSC:

"Sam Hignett confirmed that the two Ligiers labelled as Jackie Chan entries for the 24 Hours of Le Mans had little to do with the Jota: “We are just allowing Oak Racing to use our two auto entries. My team will not support these two Ligiers. Jacques Nicolet will use one of these two cars for himself while the other one is led by David Cheng”. Hignett confirmed that he currently has no plans to swap his Oreca 07s with Ligier JSP217s. “We are fully focussed on our Orecas. The 07 remains by far the best chassis there is out there” he concluded."

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2018/0...-notebook.html

[Simmi]

Originally Posted by Mike E

They are running 1 and 3 on their Rebellion R13. I guess they asked nicely?

Edit: Oh, Chiana said the same.

Maybe I'm thinking about it a bit deeply. Just feels mildly disrespectful to run the #1 when you (and none of the drivers on board) are reigning champions in the top class.

Half of me is surprised they were allowed. But then again Rebellion returning to P1 with THAT lineup of drivers is one of the best good news stories for the ACO in ages.


One question I have is which entry is Tracy Krohn (with his +1 Nic Jonsson) most likely to buy his way into? Sixth reserve has no chance.

[Bentley03]

Originally Posted by Simmi

Maybe I'm thinking about it a bit deeply. Just feels mildly disrespectful to run the #1 when you (and none of the drivers on board) are reigning champions in the top class.

Half of me is surprised they were allowed. But then again Rebellion returning to P1 with THAT lineup of drivers is one of the best good news stories for the ACO in ages.

It's a strange one for sure. I decided it probably had something to do with Rebellion's past glories that they were allowed/allocated those numbers. I did wonder if it was maybe the ACO who approached them with the idea(?), because I'm sure Rebellion themselves would have chosen 12 and 13. Anyway, they're reigning LMP2 champions and were LMP1 privateer champions in the previous years, so I guess there's at least some sort of tenuous link there.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Simmi

Sixth reserve has no chance.

In 2014 there were zero reserves left by the end of April (even though there were 10 of them instead of 9 like now, and even though the grid had 56 garages instead of 60), so never say never.

[JoeW04]

I think the ACO have done a fairly good job with the entry list, pretty well balanced, I ceartinly don't envy the people making the decisions (trying to keep manufacturers happy, the gentleman drivers happy etc) a fair few plates to keep spinning at the same time. Fingers crossed the LMP1 privateers can take it to Toyota! GTE pro will be an all out dog fight, let's hope the BOP is on the button (hopefully no sandbag shenanigans)...one can dream right

[CTD]

Nice to see Highclass racing on the Reserve list.
Would be nice to see the Dannebrog running on an entry again this year.

[Articus]

Originally Posted by NSX_LeMans

Got jailed again.

Wow that guy sure is a wasted talent. Albeit w/ a Montoya temperament.

[canaglia]

Originally Posted by airbusA346

From DSC:

"Sam Hignett confirmed that the two Ligiers labelled as Jackie Chan entries for the 24 Hours of Le Mans had little to do with the Jota: “We are just allowing Oak Racing to use our two auto entries. My team will not support these two Ligiers. Jacques Nicolet will use one of these two cars for himself while the other one is led by David Cheng”. Hignett confirmed that he currently has no plans to swap his Oreca 07s with Ligier JSP217s. “We are fully focussed on our Orecas. The 07 remains by far the best chassis there is out there” he concluded."

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2018/0...-notebook.html

Basically a sentence
To me onroak mistake is simple; they never cared about aero efficiency, but they just aim to find as much as kgf/N downforce possible. This philosophy started with their 2014 coupé and kept this concept on 2017 lmp2 too. Compared to 05 (and 03R too) the former lmp2 ligier always had a worse top speed.

Other side, Oreca found the perfect balance in aero efficiency; a car that maybe developes some downforce less, but keeps however a great cornering speed and a low drag design even in sprint package, making the car suitable basically for every track!
from old school short/mid-high average speed american tracks like road atlanta to tilkodromes, to high speed tracks like daytona (in sprint bodywork)

2 weeks ago at daytona, ligier's teams had to remove every winglet on their cars hoping to gain some tenth, with what results? bad handling in infield and top speed however lower than orecas that managed to be however faster in infield

well.... at least they solved those annoying brakes issues that gripped their old lmp2.

[Simmi]

All of which makes it crazy to me there are actually more Ligiers than Orecas in the P2 class this year. Who would have imagined that during race week last year...

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Simmi

All of which makes it crazy to me there are actually more Ligiers than Orecas in the P2 class this year. Who would have imagined that during race week last year...

Well yes but then again back last June we disn't quite expect ACO to allow special performance waiver evos for Onroak and Dallara while forbidding Oreca to touch anything either

[Jam3s]

Originally Posted by canaglia

Basically a sentence
To me onroak mistake is simple; they never cared about aero efficiency, but they just aim to find as much as kgf/N downforce possible. This philosophy started with their 2014 coupé and kept this concept on 2017 lmp2 too. Compared to 05 (and 03R too) the former lmp2 ligier always had a worse top speed.

Other side, Oreca found the perfect balance in aero efficiency; a car that maybe developes some downforce less, but keeps however a great cornering speed and a low drag design even in sprint package, making the car suitable basically for every track!
from old school short/mid-high average speed american tracks like road atlanta to tilkodromes, to high speed tracks like daytona (in sprint bodywork)

2 weeks ago at daytona, ligier's teams had to remove every winglet on their cars hoping to gain some tenth, with what results? bad handling in infield and top speed however lower than orecas that managed to be however faster in infield

well.... at least they solved those annoying brakes issues that gripped their old lmp2.

It's definitely their philosophy. Their P3 car suffers the same, it produces a lot of DF but it's lift/drag is poor and it has really been highlighted against the Norma which can afford to even run dive planes at Le Mans and still be 10kph up on the straights with equal corner performance. They'll be fine at sprint circuits like usual but not expecting much for Le Mans.

[Simmi]

I don't think this had been revealed yet but Rebellion have confirmed the make up of those driver trios this morning:

https://www.rebellion-racing.com/en/...1-c10-a128.php

#1 - André Lotterer, Neel Jani, Bruno Senna
#3 - Mathias Beche, Gustavo Menezes, Thomas Laurent


The ropely worded press release calls the two teams the most 'complementary' and the tweet calls them 'balanced'. Erm... they've clearly gone for an experienced car and a youthful car. They couldn't really be less balanced in my opinion. I don't know but I guess maybe Andre and Neel might have asked to drive together - and that decided that.

[Deleted]

I suspect this was the last time in foreseeable future that this conference was held in February.

1) The ASLMS finale isn't until 24 of february next year so with their auto invites they wouldn't be able to finalize their list until early March
2) The WEC entry list for 2019-2020 very likely isn't nearly ready yet if the season only starts in august/september/whenever
3) I doubt they'd announce LM and following season's WEC lists separately because we already know who 36 of the entries will be for the 2019 (unless someone pulls out), so that's just ~24 spots plus reserves that are unknown, not sure if that'd be worth separate announcement

[Mike E]

Fernando Rees confirmed in the Larbre Liger for the season.

[Mike E]

Adam, Martin, Lynn in the #97
Turner, Thiim , Sorensen in the #95

[Mike E]

Farfus, da Costa, Sims in the #82 BMW
Tomczyk, Eng , Catsburg in the #81?

[Aysedasi]

Yes, all those seem to be accurate, as far as I know....

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by Simmi

I don't think this had been revealed yet but Rebellion have confirmed the make up of those driver trios this morning:

https://www.rebellion-racing.com/en/...1-c10-a128.php

#1 - André Lotterer, Neel Jani, Bruno Senna
#3 - Mathias Beche, Gustavo Menezes, Thomas Laurent


The ropely worded press release calls the two teams the most 'complementary' and the tweet calls them 'balanced'. Erm... they've clearly gone for an experienced car and a youthful car. They couldn't really be less balanced in my opinion. I don't know but I guess maybe Andre and Neel might have asked to drive together - and that decided that.

Lotterer and Jani were youthful once...... The three drivers in #3 are perfectly capable of giving their esteemed teammates in the other car a good run for their money. IMO.

[Deleted]

I don't think we have to wait long for one of the reserves to disappear...

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2018/0...pt-2-lmp2.html

ARC Bratislava though are far from happy with their 8th reserve listed slot. After three seasons in the Asian Le Mans Series, this year for the first time in LMP2 (after a one-off appearance at Le Mans last season following a second place finish in the LMP3 Championship in Asia), finishing third in the Series standings, Team owner Miro Konopka has made it clear that he is singularly unamused.

 Speaking to French online magazine Endurance Info, Konopka has said that he intends to close his LMP2 effort in the wake of the decision to list him so far down the reserve list. He is particularly irked it seems by seeing teams that finished lower down the Asian standings having got the nod.



[Akrapovic]

I love teams like ARC Bratislava, but unfortunately for them this is what happens when you have too many good teams. No offense to them at all, but third in Asian Le Mans Series is hardly incredible. It's a good effort and they should be proud, but you're not going to be beating the ELMS teams with that, and there are ELMS teams on the reserve too.

They may have beaten Algarve Pro Racing in AsLMS, but Algarve have a longer history with ACO racing. And really, the ACO should be looking after regulars - the ACO looked like fools when they dropped JMW, despite their long term support.

[Coach Ep]

No worries, the ACO will always continue to make themselves look like 'fools', plenty of examples in the recent week....:

- Rusinov getting driver rating dispensation for a Pro entry in a Pro-Am series (ELMS)
- JCDC-Jota handing over 2 auto entries to a 'random' competitor
- WEC Fuji date soap opera

Do I need to continue?

[Akrapovic]

To be fair, the auto entry hand overs have always been a thing. Sometimes it's done with normal entries too - just get AF Corse to enter a car and you can stick whatever name you want on it. That side of things doesn't bother me much.

The driver ranking dispensation means it's all now pointless. Might as well just do away with it. This also applies the other way - no offense to Hedman, but he shouldn't be in a P1 car. So if we're going to ignore rankings, then why bother with them?

And Fuji is just nonsense. Put it back for god sake.

[Deleted]

Pretty much official confirmation of reserve list shrinking to 8 + TBA team may be in danger too in the actual grid

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/arc-bratislava-pulls-plug-on-lmp2-program/

However, Sportscar365 understands that at least one confirmed entry is up in the air

I would imagine that we can pretty safely assume Krohn AF Corse too be pulled from the reserves (and maybe ELMS too) later this spring once he buys himself a drive somewhere. Also the Riley, team said somewhere that they might've needed to skip some IMSA events to get prepped for LM, so I suspect they will pull the reserve out in April the latest if they're magically not at the head of the list by then

[Mike E]

Luca Stolz joins Keating/Bleekemolen in #85 Am Ferrari.

[antonylight]

Endurance Info have reported that IDEC Sport have withdrawn their 7th Reserve entry joining ARC Bratislava (8th Reserve) in withdrawing, leaving 7 Reserves left.