The brand new #33 Eurasia Oreca 05 was delivered to Paul Ricard this evening from Oreca’s nearby factory, the last of the full season entrants to arrive at the track with the only other unexpected absentee now being the now cancelled #59 TDS Racing Aston Martin, a customer apparently failing to fulfil contractual obligations at a somewhat late point in proceedings we understand.
At least three teams were apparently in the running for the Nissan contract to run Sir Chris Hoy in LMP2, the record breaking Olympian is testing this week with Algarve Pro with Andrea Pizzitola and Ryan Cullen added to the already confirmed Parth Ghorpade to run over the next two days in addition to car owner Michael Munemann.
The Algarve Pro team’s elevation to the full Le Mans entry list will no doubt see the traditional none too orderly queue of interested parties outside the team’s garage for the remainder of the test.
The #25 team confirmed to DSC today that they will return to the Asian Le Mans Series for the 2016/17 season “We loved the Series last year, the management team know how to talk to their customers and it just got better and better.” said Team manager Stuart Cox.
One man on the lookout for a Le Mans drive at Paul Ricard today was 2015 LMP2 race winner Richard Bradley, Richard’s 2016 programme is a full FIA WEC effort (apart from Le Mans) in the second Manor WEC Oreca 05.
Confirmed by paddock sources today the second Manor Oreca is KCMG’s spare chassis, the KCMG team requiring the car back as a spare for their standalone Le Mans campaign.
Lurking in the back of the Proton Competition truck was the WEC LM GTE Am bound KCMG Porsche 911 RSR!
