The 2022 European Le Mans Series ‘family photo’ was captured on Sunday evening by Jakob Ebrey with all 42 runners on parade ahead of the two-day Pre-Season Official test at Paul Ricard, and then the 4-hour opening race on Sunday.
17 LMP2 cars, 13 LMP3s and 12 GTEs are set to contest the season.
Absolutely Absolute!
Absolute Racing will contest the full 2022 season with the #18 Porsche 911 RSR-19 for car owner Andrew Haryanto, Martin Runmp and Alessio Picariello, a line-up that Team co-owner Ingo Matter was proud to say was a “100% Absolute Racing squad.”
The effort is supported here by Proton Competition with Absolute understood to have been turned down for a full season FIA WEC slot and currently sitting as the second reserve for the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Testing Controls Tightened
There has been much paddock discussion of a change to the testing regulations with immediate effect, issued on Friday.
Effectively the intention seems to be to prevent teams operating in multiple ACO Championships from testing as a competitor in another ACO Championship inside the 30-day window allowed, in a move to bear down again on cost control.
The tweak to the Sporting Regulations also closes a ‘loophole’ where teams with more than one operating license will, henceforth, be treated as one and the same entity (eg United Autosports/ United Autosports USA or Proton Competition/ Dempsey proton Racing).
It would be fair to say that the move has not been universally popular. Multiple Team Principals have expressed similar thoughts to DSC that whilst they understood the intention of the change, they feel it will not prevent teams with the budget to set from doing so, that they will continue to test at circuits outside of the regulations’ scope, “If we can’t test at Spa then we’ll go to Monza, or Barcelona, and honestly, that is only going to increase the costs!’
Another called for action to introduce official testing sessions at cost-effective levels: “I want to see cost control too, but the reality is that it is cheaper for us to test in the way that is now being outlawed than it is to come to this Official Test. There is surely a middle way where we can have testing at relevant circuits, at the right times but at controlled cost levels. I think most of the paddock would support that.”
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Testing Times
There have been two test sessions so far today with a two-hour ‘night’ test running as this is posted, from 7-9pm
The Morning sessions saw 41 of the 42 cars running – the #10 Eurointenational Ligier not running today at all.
As noted earlier, there was a significant incident in the first session that left the #24 Nielsen Racing Oreca with rear-end damage, the team still working on the car this evening.
Both sessions were topped by the #37 Cool Racing Oreca of Yifei Ye, the quickest time coming in the afternoon with a 1:43.856 the only sub 1:44 across both sessions.
The fastest LMP3 times came in the morning session with Cool Racing making it to the top in LMP3 too, new signing Malthe Jakobsen with a 1:50.106, 6 tenths up on Alex Kapadia in the #5 RLR MSport Ligier.
Davide Rigon in the #60 Iron Lynx Ferrari would top the Morning session in 1:54.201, a time that would be quicker than anything produced in the afternoon running, that session was toped by Gianmaria Bruni in the #77 Proton Competition Porsche with a 1:54.227.
