Asian Le Mans Series Managing Director, Cyrille Taesch Wahlen has announced a variety of changes to the series’ calendar and format for the 2017/18 season.
The Series are working to avoid calendar clashes with other relevant major series with Cyrille Taesch Wahlen set to call for a meeting with other major Asian series before the calendar is released.
After extensive discussion with the major players of the Asian Motorsport industry and with the full support of the teams, the series will also remain a four round Championship, with one race (not announced) being extended to 6 Hours. The round at Zhejiang will not take place.
“As a Team we strongly believe in the growth of Asian Motorsport, and we support every step taken towards this growth,” said AF Corse boss Amato Ferrari. “Avoiding clashes between championships will give us the opportunity to consolidate and improve our customer base, so we’re really appreciating ACOs efforts.
“Business-wise I think four races rather then five will help keep the costs down, a fundamental factor to attract new customers.”
Eurasia Motorsport’s Mark Goddard is also supportive of the calendar change. “Eurasia Motorsport are fully supportive of the move to change the Asian Le Mans to four events and excited that one of the events will take place over six hours. It is refreshing to have an organiser which listens to the teams and I am sure this move will result in an even bigger grid than we saw last season. Whilst five events would have been nice the market is just not quite ready for it yet.”
“We are also happy to learn of the move to liaise with the organizers of other regional series,” Goddard added. “The way the market has developed recently teams need to compete in more than one series a year for it to make commercial sense. In fact this year Eurasia is competing in five series plus Le Mans.
“Clashing dates hurt teams and as a result negatively affect championships and hopefully the ACO can lead the way for organizers to work together to give teams the opportunity to compete in multiple series, thereby increasing the starting grids for all.”
In addition to that the series is introducing a new all-bronze driver LMP2 gentleman class. This brings the total number of potential classes to four (LMP2 – with the overall classification and the Gentlemans trophy, LMP3, GT and GT Cup).
