Trans-Am legend Tony Ave was getting settled in at Murphy Prototypes yesterday ahead of track sessions starting this morning.
He’s a full season entrant together with fellow Trans-AM racer and close friend Doug Peterson though the early season effort will be without one key component of the proposed effort as Tony explained to DSC.
“We had planned to run the new LMP3 car (the Ave/ Riley AR-2 – The AR-1 is the Ave Engineering produced (and Riley designed) Trans-AM tubeframe chassis of which almost 20 have been produced) all season but a number of factors have caused some delay.
“One of the biggest is that in order to produce the new car to the cost cap we established an in-house composites facility and that has been a longer and more involved process than perhaps we anticipated.
“The first car has though passed its initial crash tests as the company progress towards homologation of the new car.”
That’s not to say though that the team’s ELMS entry will be delayed though.
“No, we decided not to rush the process, to take the time to do the essential testing with the new car, but to find a way to race in the meantime.
“Our current plan is to debut our car at Imola and until then to run a Ginetta (the Team RLR/ University of Bolton car, now in full Murphy Prototypes green and yellow livery, complete with Ave/ Riley decals!)”
“I’m happy to see the market so healthy here and with a lot of other cars in other Series too.
“They have got the rules right and whilst the cost cap is a challenge, it makes a lot more sense if they can be produced, and sold, in large numbers.
And what about the US market? Some doors appear to be closed, for the time being at least?
“Yes, but let’s wait and see, there will be LMP3 cars in America, in fact there are already LMP3 cars in America, and there will be more.”
Ligier, it seems, won’t have very much longer effectively uncontested in the LMP3 marketplace.
