In the wake of the news this morning of Ligier Automotive taking back control of their Sales and Marketing in the UK from United Autosports’ Ligier UK operation DSC took time to catch up with Richard Dean, co-owner of the Yorkshire-based operation, to establish exactly what the team’s plans are for the immediate future.
After confirming last week that a request had been made, now granted by the FIA WEC, for a switch to an ORECA chassis for the team’s entry into the World Endurance Championship’s LMP2 class for the coming 2019/20 season, the decision from Ligier to take back control of their brand in the UK market does not mean the end of the racing relationship between the two. It’s now clear though that United has multiple options going forward, and that the team’s LMP2 plans are not now entirely reliant on the success of their current fleet of Ligier’s.
“Firstly it’s very important to stress that we are moving on through the 2019 ELMS with every intention of pushing for race wins and the title with our Ligiers (the team currently has access to three JS P217 cars). And if those wins come there’s every reason to expect that we’ll move forward with the Ligier in LMP2 in Europe.
“That said, as we made clear a few days ago we have switched to the ORECA for the FIA WEC programme, though as things have turned out our plans to prepare for that have given us some significant options and choices for the future.” “The race car for FIA WEC is a brand-new ORECA chassis but with the season start looming and initial response (via an intermediary) that a car would not be available until after the WEC season had started, I needed to secure our programme.”
That led to a decision to purchase initially one, and shortly afterwards both, of the now ex-JDC Miller ORECAs, plus the team’s spares inventory. “We wanted a zero-hours car, principally because the logistics of the WEC mean that the team has very little time with the car once the flyaways begin. Happily, when ORECA realised who the potential customer was they managed to switch around their production schedule, and we now have a brand new car.” (DSC believes the United car is the ORECA initially destined for PR1 Mathiesen as their second car, the US team will now receive a brand new car in late September.)
The first ex-JDC car will be fully rebuilt and despatched with the WEC effort as a rolling spares source, which leaves the second ex JDC car spare in the UK.
“That car is being sea-freighted to us with the remainder of the spares package – and we’ll rebuild it when it gets here before using it in Europe to test. There are currently no plans to race the car in 2019. “It is though, likely to be available to race with us in 2020 in Europe.”
Much depends, for Ligier in the ELMS it seems, on the racing fortunes of United’s Ligiers in the remaining four races of the 2019 ELMS!
