European Le Mans Series and Le Mans Cup Series get ready to go in Barcelona next week

Within the LMP2/LMP3/GTE grid of the ELMS, we will see the TF Sport team continue to fly the Aston Martin Racing flag with the greater volume of cars of that make as they present both the #95 car of John Hartshorne, Jonny Adam and Ben Tuck as well as the #72 Project 24 car of Valentin Hasse-Clot alongside brothers Max and Arnold Robin.

They in turn will race alongside the debuting GMB Motorsport team with the AMR brand for the first time as drivers Jens Reno Moller and Gustav Birch will now by AMR factory driver Nikki Thiim in a revised line up as to that previously advised at the time of their announcement.

With the ELMS being another Balance of Performance based series (much like that of the FIA WEC GTE Am class), that criteria has already been set by the series technical panel for this opening round (subject to change of course) where the AMR Vantage GTE platform will be based upon a base weight of 1245kg and 88litres of fuel (turbo boost pressures rarely change between events).

Then in turn, we have the space left by the departing Bullitt Racing team within the supporting Le Mans Cup Series taken by the Racing Spirit of Lemans team as they step up beyond the Vantage GT4 platform that they compete in within both the FFSA GT4 and GT4 European Series for the first time.

Here the #10 RSLM car will compete with a driver pairing of Valentin Hasse-Clot and Arnold Robin again where this pair will race a double header programme in both Series at each venue within their twelve strong full season class.

Whilst the ELMS cars compete within a four-hour race, the LMP3 and GT3 based cars compete within a shorter one hour and fifty-minute race format at each of their race venues except Le Mans where they have two races.

In a similar fashion to the ELMS GTE runners, the LMC GT3 cars are all BoP’d as well with the Vantage GT3 platform starting the year at 1300kg but with a differing boost regime to that of the GTE equivalent.

The Prologue test will run over with five sessions for the ELMS runners and just two sessions for the LMC runners over just the first day. Both series will then remain at the circuit ahead of the start to the opening round just a few days later.

Photo credits – Teams / A Lofthouse