SPV Racing travel to the historic Spa-Francorchamps this weekend for their first competitive weekend racing as an LMP3 team, taking part in round five of the 2016 European Le Mans Series.
With their participation coming together quite close to the event, the championship’s coordinators the ACO, have kindly agreed to allow SPV Racing to race in conjunction with the Speed Factory team, who have been unable to race this weekend due to circumstances beyond their control.
Spa-Francorchamps will become one of the main events for the team this year, to prepare for their participation in the 2016/2017 Asian Le Mans Series, starting on the 28th October in China.
Racing for the team this weekend will be Danish driver Kim Rødkjær, the Bronze graded driver who has previously raced in Danish Supertourisme. He will be joined by two Silver graded Irish drivers, Dan Polley and Kevin O’Hara.
Polley was recently crowned the Irish Formula Vee Champion just last weekend, and his past experience includes competing in Asia in Formula Renault, winning the China Radical Cup alongside O’Hara and also LMP2 in the Asian Le Mans Series in 2014. Following two tests in Barcelona with the team earlier this year, Polley is looking forward to his first competitive outing with the team.
Kevin O’Hara is well known as one of the fastest drivers in Ireland. A former Irish Young Racing Driver of the Year, O’Hara has regularly been a race winner in Formula Ford 1600, and like teammate Polley, has raced in Asia in previous years in Formula Renault and won the China Radical Cup Championship in 2009 racing with Polley with four race wins. Despite having no prior LMP3 seat time ahead of the event, Kevin his feeling confident that he can quickly settle into his new Ligier.
The team’s competitive debut will begin this morning at 10:10 (local time) with the Bronze Driver Collective Test which will be completed by Kim Rødkjær.
Lars Lindberg – Team Manager, SPV Racing:
“This is the moment we have been waiting for. We have spent almost a year working towards this day and I couldn’t think of a better circuit such as Spa-Francorchamps to make our debut. It’s been a very busy couple of weeks putting it all together, but we certainly couldn’t have done it without the support and co-operation of everyone at the ACO, for which we are very grateful. We also need to thank the guys at Speed Factory for their help and support. It is a great pleasure for us to welcome Dan, Kevin and Kim to our team, and we are confident that these three guys can have a very strong weekend.”