[LM24] Le Mans 2018 Entry List Speculation

[GT6]

Originally Posted by Mr Pink

Not expand but maybe at the expense of AM-entries? I for one wouldn't mind.

Well the Aston Martin entries will be the new car, so with out seeing how they will perform how can you say that. The ACO will decide who gets the places but i can not see them favouring Porsche over AM after what has happened. Unlees you mean amateur gt and those will mostly be auto entries from the WEC etc

[Damian Baldi]

BAR1 to Le Mans?

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/b...e-mans-effort/

[Mike E]

And apparently JDC Miller have their IMSA nomination.

[Koenigsegg]

Originally Posted by Mike E

And apparently JDC Miller have their IMSA nomination.

Apparently Ben Keating for GTE-Am as well. Curious about which car he'll use.

[Mr Pink]

Originally Posted by GT6

Well the Aston Martin entries will be the new car, so with out seeing how they will perform how can you say that. The ACO will decide who gets the places but i can not see them favouring Porsche over AM after what has happened. Unlees you mean amateur gt and those will mostly be auto entries from the WEC etc

I meant GTE Am. But you're right, somehow the auto entries slipped my mind.

[Simmi]

Not one for 2018 but an interesting potential future entry - Sebastian Ogier.

http://www.crash.net/wrc/news/888145...ter-wrc-career

As a massive rally fan I would love to see him follow in the footsteps of Loeb and McRae and give the race a go. I think he'd be quick.

[Mike E]

Originally Posted by Simmi

Not one for 2018 but an interesting potential future entry - Sebastian Ogier.

http://www.crash.net/wrc/news/888145...ter-wrc-career

As a massive rally fan I would love to see him follow in the footsteps of Loeb and McRae and give the race a go. I think he'd be quick.

He is certainly a high level operator and seems to have given M Sport a kick up the backside this year. Agree he would be a great addition to the race.

[Victor_RO]

Looks like 4 works Porsches are planned in GTE-Pro (with submitted entries and confirmed driver line-ups).

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/p...-24-h-le-mans/

I'm going to need to beef up my radio headset/ear defenders...

[Mike E]

Originally Posted by Victor_RO

Looks like 4 works Porsches are planned in GTE-Pro (with submitted entries and confirmed driver line-ups).

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/p...-24-h-le-mans/

I'm going to need to beef up my radio headset/ear defenders...

Should be a few of them in Am as well. Beautiful noise.

[Dyson Mazda]

Originally Posted by GT6

What Porsche want will not always happen, let us say their leverage over the ACO is not what it once was.
With what looks like a very full GTE grid giving them more than 2 places in Pro will obviously mean someone else losses out. BMW are the new boys, Corvette, Ford, Ferrari and Aston will need slots so unless the overall grid expands(not likely) i think it is unlikely Porsche will treated with anything like the respect they had before they blew LMP1H apart.

The strength of an OEMs leverage at the LM24 is directly tied to the sponsorship dollars they put into the sport. If the are writing a $5m+ check, they will get their way.

[Deleted]

Back in 2012?/2013? ACO rejected one of the factory Astons to the reserve list, but then again that shoestring run project doesn't have the dollar power Porsche and others too.

Anyway... pity, that'll just mean larger GTE quantity versus prototype

[MaskedRacer]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Back in 2012?/2013? ACO rejected one of the factory Astons to the reserve list, but then again that shoestring run project doesn't have the dollar power Porsche and others too.

Anyway... pity, that'll just mean larger GTE quantity versus prototype

I will be happy to have a 17 car GTE pro grid at the expense of privateer ELMS LMP2 or GTE am cars. Great move for Porsche! So turn that frown upside down Chiana.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Chiana

Does anyone know yet when the ACO holds their press conference? It's usually been Thursday or Friday on the first week of February but I guess by the way dates fall this year it could also be on the second week

Will also be interesting to see if their modify this proceeding for 2019 with the new changes in place

I'll answer myself then - and indeed week later it is

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/e...r-24h-le-mans/

The ACO confirmed that requests will be accepted between Dec. 18 and Feb. 5, with the entry list to be announced on Feb. 9.
It marks a change from recent years, which saw the 60 confirmed entries revealed one week earlier, in the first week of February.

Mark your calendars then!

Also:

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2017/1...er-season.html

In terms of the Garage 56 car for 2018, though Don Panoz and co. told DSC at Le Mans this year that it’s “the candidate for Garage 56 next year” with its Green4u concept, in a statement to DSC just today, Green 4U/Panoz’s explained that the programme has “not officially been granted a future Garage 56 slot, whether 2018 or beyond”. However, Green4U explained that discussions, are still ongoing.

Truly 'shocking'

[Akrapovic]

We've went from "DPi is needed to fill out the grid" to "we have too many cars, ELMS is too healthy".

There are ways around these sort of problems. Auto-entries should come with an asterix saying if you earn more than 2, the others are at the discretion of the ACO. As much as I love Jota, we don't need 5 Jotas.

Similarly, do we really need 4 car teams? Does the 4th car really add anything? Is 3 Porsche, 3 Ford, 2 Corvette, 2-3 Ferrari not enough? (works cars that is, not including private). I know we're not really enjoying the lack of variety in LMP2, but I'd rather have a different team than literally another identical car.

Also, lets be honest here - the AsLMS entries are a bit silly. LMP2 sure, LMP3...maybe. But 2 GTE entries? I understand they're trying to bring cars to AsLMS, but then you risk penalising American and European teams in the hope of getting more Asian teams - the same teams that have moved to Blancpain. I think a discussion needs to happen on why Blancpain has been seen as a much better place to run than AsLMS in Asia.

If you took it down to 2-3 Jota, 3 Ford, 3 Porsche, and removed 1-2 AsLMS auto-entries, then you free up 5-7 slots. Limit private entries to 2, works entries to 3. Yes there issues surrounding what a private entry is (AF Corse), and there are problems with team names. But common sense sorts it. It does look like we're going to have too many good cars. But then if you're giving away entries like this, that was going to happen eventually.

[joeb]

Originally Posted by Chiana

I'll answer myself then - and indeed week later it is

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/e...r-24h-le-mans/

The ACO confirmed that requests will be accepted between Dec. 18 and Feb. 5, with the entry list to be announced on Feb. 9.
It marks a change from recent years, which saw the 60 confirmed entries revealed one week earlier, in the first week of February.

Mark your calendars then!

Also:

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2017/1...er-season.html

In terms of the Garage 56 car for 2018, though Don Panoz and co. told DSC at Le Mans this year that it’s “the candidate for Garage 56 next year” with its Green4u concept, in a statement to DSC just today, Green 4U/Panoz’s explained that the programme has “not officially been granted a future Garage 56 slot, whether 2018 or beyond”. However, Green4U explained that discussions, are still ongoing.

Truly 'shocking'

I forgot the green4U thing even existed, and now it probably won't, lol.

[Mike E]

JDC-Miller and Keating invitations confirmed.

http://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/a...-auto-invites/

[Mike E]

Race week schedule released:

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2017/1...eleased-2.html

[Aysedasi]

I hadn't twigged that apart from the RTLM back-up, we only have the AM Festival. I may be spending less time trackside during the week than I thought.......

[Articus]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

If you took it down to 2-3 Jota, 3 Ford, 3 Porsche, and removed 1-2 AsLMS auto-entries, then you free up 5-7 slots. Limit private entries to 2, works entries to 3. Yes there issues surrounding what a private entry is (AF Corse), and there are problems with team names. But common sense sorts it. It does look like we're going to have too many good cars. But then if you're giving away entries like this, that was going to happen eventually.

I do not think you've made a clear enough distinction regarding the complaint with the GTE cars. The Ford entries are Ford Chip Ganassi USA and then Ford Chip Ganassi team UK. The Porsche teams are Manthey and Core Autosport. They are different entities, with predominantly different staff. You will get common influences like Larry Holt, and Steffen Walliser but other than that, the men and women are different

You may be upset about how it's all funded from the same wallet, but at the end of the day, it's 4 different teams. They just happen to get massive consultation services from the Ford and Porsche factory.

So each teams deserves to be able to enter 2 cars. Especially considering the commitment they make to sportscar racing by fielding entries in two different series is a large part of why people pay attention to it today.

I will take 8 professionally driven Ford and Porsches anyday, over random LMP2 and GTE-Am entries with drivers of much less experience shredding their cars all over the track every hour in categories that get very little TV time.

[Akrapovic]

The commitment to sportscar racing starts falling apart when you look long term. Teams like JMW have provided a long term commitment to ACO racing and were cast aside for to fit in another factory Ford GT in their first year. That wasn’t about commitment, that was purely about money. Manufactures commitment drops off pretty quickly when it suits them. And then the ACO has to run back to the small teams that were committed and hope they’ll fill the gap again.

Whilst I don’t want to see the grid filled with cars that are out of their depth (Mr Krohn has thankfully found a good home in Creventic and is better off for it), there has to be a balance between keeping the small team numbers healthy and having factory support. Otherwise you put yourself in the situation that LMP1 had where we had a crisis. If it’s about who “deserves” a slot as you put it, some of these amateur teams have given more to ACO racing than, for example, CORE Autosport has (no offence to CORE of course). Seems to be that commitment and deserving are getting muddled up with money here.

ACO has gone to great lengths (some of which we don’t all agree with...) to get a good healthy grid of LMP2 cars. To then tell those cars that they can’t run at Le Mans could be catastrophic to some teams projects. GTE-Am is a little different as there’s an argument to be made that that’s just field filling for when things were weak anyway.

I think it’s a perfectly reasonable argument to make to say manufacturers should be allowed 3 cars max, regardless of who runs the car. That’s not like it’s cutting off a limb. And as long as those cars aren’t being replaced by an entry that’s out of its depth then I don’t see the problem. We can talk about the personnel involved but at the end of the day it's a factory entry and the intent, support, money and resulting headlines are all the same.

I'd like to see organisers learn from their mistakes rather than repeat them over and over again. We've been through this cycle recently. Let's not do it again. It's like 3 car teams are small and there are regulations that are meant to prevent this anyway - they just don't use them. If IMSA started turning away IMSA teams From Daytona to fit some one of ACO regulars in, there would be riots.

[Mike E]

Racing Team Nederland will be on the entry list.

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2017/1...er-season.html

[antonylight]

GTE Am MR Racing with AF Corse Ferrari 488 confirmed for WEC 18/19 super season for Olivier Beretta, Eddie Cheever III & Motoaki Ishikawa per ACO website

[vincegail]

Originally Posted by Mike E

Racing Team Nederland will be on the entry list.

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2017/1...er-season.html

Great news! (I might be a bit biased ) Hope the Dallara will get some great updates, otherwise they will be driving at the back-end of the pack all the time.

[GT6]

Originally Posted by vincegail

Great news! (I might be a bit biased ) Hope the Dallara will get some great updates, otherwise they will be driving at the back-end of the pack all the time.

And a better paint job, i know the colour and silly name was related to the supermarket paying the bills but putrid yellow and all the speed of the disney character on the bonnet. Perhaps orange with a few tulips and support from a cheese (and help from the renault/EDAMS team in formula e)

Just a suggestion.

[whitemr2]

Originally Posted by GT6

And a better paint job, i know the colour and silly name was related to the supermarket paying the bills but putrid yellow and all the speed of the disney character on the bonnet. Perhaps orange with a few tulips and support from a cheese (and help from the renault/EDAMS team in formula e)

Just a suggestion.

I can garantee you that will never happen, team owner is a big fan of Minardi and ownes several F1's. His whole company is Minardi yellow. Love it.