After a full podium of Dunlop yellow caps at Silverstone, where four different Dunlop teams led throughout the race, the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) is now set for round two at Imola, Italy where Dunlop teams will try for a repeat performance.

Following the domination of the race in the wet at Silverstone and the strong performance in the World Endurance Championship last weekend at Spa with the Dunlop cars proving fastest in the dry, the Dunlop engineers, teams and drivers are ready to tackle the Italian event. The class has grown to ten cars with the addition of the HVM Status GP team which has chosen Dunlop tyres for the Lola B12/80 Coupé.

In the LM-GTE class, JMW is fielding its Ferrari to fight for Dunlop honours. The team narrowly missed a podium finish at Silverstone with the safety car period meaning the team couldn’t take advantage of their strong pace in the wet, finishing fourth.

While the ELMS teams are expected to be competing in the warmth of Italy, Dunlop is also bidding for victory in open tyre competition on the same weekend, in the unpredictable micro-climate of the Nürburgring where the 24 Hour race is being contested by over 175 cars. AMG is a Dunlop development partner and six Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG GT3 cars are among the 33 competitors choosing Dunlop rubber. Black Falcon and Rowe are fielding three AMGs each, both teams having had considerable success at the Nürburgring. Black Falcon has also won the last three Dubai 24 Hour races on Dunlop tyres.

Two specifications of dry tyres are permitted in the ELMS and Dunlop has opted to nominate the ‘soft’ and ‘medium’ options for Imola. Despite expected track temperatures of up to 40°C and a right-hand sided bias due to the anti-clockwise track, it is expected that the tyres will be capable of double-stints.

Friday 17th May sees two one-hour practice sessions with qualifying and the three hour race taking place on Saturday 18th May starting at 16.00hrs local time (GMT+2 hours).

David Meenan, Senior Design Engineer, Dunlop Motorsport: “We intend to build on our dominant performance at Silverstone. The track will around it’s hottest when the race starts and will probably be around 15 degrees cooler by the end of the race so it will be interesting to see how that affects performance and tyre strategy. We have a big advantage with the wide operating window of the tyres which should help our teams do well.”

Source : Dunlop