News and Reports

Fruits of too ambitious plans of SRO are now getting concrete shapes. The first victim is the GT2 class and its European Championship, which is 'postponed' as per official press release. This also means that we lost the last signs of endurance spirit from SRO-controlled series and that the FIA GT also lost its biggest race, the Spa 24 Hours, as it was planned only for the GT2 Championship. So FIA now has a championship for GT1 cars, which were generally unwanted by most of the protagonists of the GT racing (Ferrari, Chevrolet, Porsche, Aston Martin), who wished to have a single category similar to the current GT2 class. Now we an artificial GT1 class instead consisting mainly of cars that were destined to die by end of 2009, and the rest mainly from second level builders plus only serious factory effort by Nissan, which should normally blow away from the rest had there be no equivalency, etc. ballast.

Today the Le Mans Series entry list was released. It contains 44 cars, most of which are in LMP2 (16) and GT2 (15) classes. Only two Saleens are listed in GT1. In GT2 there is a factory BMW Schnitzer entry among cars usual in previous seasons. In LMP1 the Pescarolo team now disappeared completely while rather surprisingly factory Audi R15 is listed with two cars. All other entries were more or less expected with a single exception, the Lola B10/60 Coupé of Noël Del Bello Racing, which is a welcome addition. Altogether there are four Audis against four Lolas and lone Peugeot, Oreca and Zytek. One of the Lolas is last year's Aston Martin incarnation. At the same time with the full season entry factory team Audi confirmed they plan only three races at the moment: Paul Ricard, Spa and Silverstone. The LMP2 class sees a return of MG Lola but with AER engine, debut of HDP (ex-Acura) and a good selection of various other makes seen in the past: Lola, Zytek, Radical, Zytek, Courage, Pescarolo and Lucchini.

Aston Martin Racing team announced their plans recently. The focus will be the Le Mans 24 Hour race where the team did surprisingly well the last year when the best car finished fourth. But there will be more races. Sebring 12 Hours and the second ALMS race are on their schedule. Then the factory team take one car to Paul Ricard for the first Le Mans Series race. No more races are planned before the Le Mans race but there are some likely races in the second half of the season, to be announced later. Generally we can follow a tendency of big factory team to contest only selected rounds of various series rather than competing for titles in individual championships. While last year factory Acura concentrated and won ALMS, and Aston Martin did the same in the Le Mans Series, this year the title would most likely go to privateers, but factories will add some attention here and there. So it seems that first LMS race will see Aston Martin racing against privateers, while in the second LMS race at Spa a battle between factory Audi and Peugeot is possible. Hopefully the planned International Le Mans Challenge might bring the factories together to fight for one world crown.