Le Mans 24 Hours - News From The ACO Press Conference 4 - Manufacturer Reactions

In the wake of the announcement of the technical regulations for 2014, and the repeated reassurances therein that the continued future health of privateers in LMP1 was an important component of the new formula DSC sought to take the views of some of the potential car builders as to whether they saw there being a market for such cars in the future, particularly with the question as to whether any further Lola chassis will be produced currently being so unsure.

Hugues de Chaunac, whose Oreca concern has built customer LMP1s recently, and whose Oreca 03 numerically dominates LMP2 confirmed that Oreca’s focus is firmly on supporting the current and future Toyota programme and that future LMP1 customer chassis was not on the agenda for the company.  Further production of LMP2 and LMPC chassis though would certainly continue.

Jacques Nicolet was undecided, either on whether Oak Racing would continue as an LMP1 entrant, or whether the Onroak Automotive  company that produces the Oak Pescarolo chassis would see a worthwhile market in the future LMP1 pond.  Again though he confirmed that LMP2 was seen as being a potentially very lively customer market in which both would continue.    

Dieter Gass meanwhile might not be an obvious port of call to ask about privateer LMP1s but with the Audi factory squad procuring chassis in reasonably large numbers it seemed sensible to ask whether they see a potential future market in more basic versions of their future LMPs as customer chassis.

“If anything your question exposes a further area that we need to discuss – At the moment it seems as if there might be the possibility for a manufacturer to gain an advantage by doing exactly that, but keeping branding and marketing at a high level to take advantage of the technical freedom for privateers.

Finally we bumped into Nick Wirth as the Press Conference broke up:

“We are certainly very interested in the new regulations.  We have a coupe on the design board but of course it would need pretty substantial redesign to be compliant. 

“I certainly see a market there, and I see a further market in LMP2 too – We need to find out first of course what will happen with the eligibility and potential grandfathering of the existing LMP2 cars but there is no reason why some form of economy of scale should not apply there when things even out.