In just a couple of days KSM, the German LMP2 team from Siegburg, will travel to the south of France for the 1st LMS round of the 2010 season at the Paul Ricard HTTT. It is actually hard to believe for a race series organized by a French automobile club, but with the exception of the 1000 km LMS preview race 2003 at le Mans this is the very first regular LMS round on French soil.
The French circuit, also known as “Le Castellet” to race fans worldwide, was built in 1969 at Le Castellet near Marseille in the South of France, financed by drinks magnate Paul Ricard. The track has had a quite mixed history: It was a very popular and widely used track in the 70s, and 80s and 90s and played often host for the French Formula 1 Grand Prix in these decades. Since the 90s, the track has been basically used for motorcycle racing and French national racing. In 1999 the track as sold to a company owned by F1 promotor Bernie Ecclestone and has since then been developed into a very advanced test rack with distinctive black and blue runoff areas. The track can be used in many different combinations, with the shortest version being just 800 metres long and the longest version resulting in a track length of 5.8 km. The famous mistral straight with 1.8 km length is the fastest part of the track – when used without the chicane.
41 cars are entered for the first LMS round 2010 and once again the competition in the LMP2 class will be quiet hard with 11 cars racing there. A remarkable variety of LMP2 chassis/engine combinations will be on the grid: Lola, Pescarolo, Courage, Ginetta-Zytek and HPD, engines come also from the latter two and from Judd and AER.
Once again KSM will be the only German team in this class and it will be also the only team running the open top version of the Lola chassis, this combined with a V8 Jud engine. This is a new chassis/engine combination for the team and the first outing at the official LM test in March was very promising.
The KSM Lola Judd will be driven by KSM regulars Hideki Noda and Jean de Pourtales, a very experienced driver pairing. Former F1 driver and Japan Le Mans Challenge winner Hideki Noda will go into his 3rd LMS Season, Frenchman Jean de Pourtales has also been in the series since 2007. The pit crew will show continuity: Gavin Wills, Alex Schiller, Andre Heidel and Frank Troebs been active for KSM before, new to team are data engineer Paul South and the mechanics Mike Bitterlich and Dieter Klein.
Hardy Schiller: “After the long winter break it was my privilege to do the first miles with the new chassis-engine combination at a shakedown on a German airstrip – a nice experience. The whole rear end of the car was re-engineered but worked fine from the very first minute. Now I can’t wait to see our car racing again.”
Friday will see a free practice, the qualifying will be on Saturday and the flagfall for the first 8-hour race of the series will be on Sunday 11:00 am. Compared to a 1000 km race the ACO will give double points for all teams because the significant longer race distance.
Source : KSM