Rebellion Racing, four time winners of the FIA World Endurance Championship Trophy for Private LMP1 Teams (and current leaders of this year’s Championship) will be putting their participation in the LMP1 category on hold after the conclusion of the 2016 season and will move to the new look LMP2 class for 2017.
The announcement marks a considerable shift from Rebellion’s earlier statement that they team intended to return to the LMP1 Privateer grid in 2017 developing a new LMP1 L car for next season. With those plans now put on hold, ByKolles are the only team confirmed for next season in the sub-class.
Rebellion’s statement reads:
Rebellion Racing first raced in LMP1 in 2009, running a single Lola chassis powered by an Aston Martin V12 engine. In 2010, Rebellion Racing ran two LMP1 cars, with the Lola chassis powered by Judd’s 5.5L V10 engines. Between 2011 and 2014, the team formed a close partnership with Toyota Motorsport GmbH and using the normally aspirated 3.4L V8 Toyota engine, Rebellion Racing achieved many successes including finishing in fourth place overall at Le Mans in 2012 and again in 2014.
With a change of Technical Regulations at the start of 2014 when the LMP1 class moved to a fuel-flow restricted formula, Rebellion Racing in association with ORECA built their own LMP1 cars, the Rebellion R-Ones. The Rebellion R-One cars were initially powered by the Toyota V8 that had served the team so well and then in 2015, as the team strived for even more performance, the Rebellion R-One cars were re-engineered to use the V6 twin turbo engine from AER.
That fourth place overall finish at Le Mans in the 24 Hour race in 2014 showed that the Rebellion R-One privateer cars could mix with the Manufacturer hybrid cars. Since 2014, Manufacturer development has significantly pushed the boundaries of LMP1 and, after having been the main flag bearer for the privateer entrants in the category for the past seven seasons, Rebellion Racing will next year move to the new style LMP2.
It is an exciting time for LMP2 as new specification cars, which will be eligible to race in all the top sportscar championships around the world, are currently being unveiled by the chassis suppliers. The pace of these new LMP2 cars is forecast to be significantly quicker than the current cars and with high levels of competition between the teams and the cars, the challenge is very attractive to Rebellion Racing, we are looking forward to this new adventure.
Missing from the (very carefully worded) statement are two key details – The choice of chassis, with several teams still weighing up the potential strengths and weaknesses of the four available options, and the details of the Championship, or Championships, that the team will race in.
With the team having enjoyed considerable success in North America in recent years, back to back Petit Le Mans wins in 2012 and 2013 a major team cv highlight, it would be absolutely no surprise to see Rebellion’s 2017 programme feature some of the IMSA enduros as well as a programme designed to cement their continued appearance in the Le Mans 24 Hours.
DSC expects there to be a two car entry posted for the 2017 Le Mans 24 Hours by the Swiss flagged, UK based team.
