Rebellion team to drop down to LMP2 in 2017
REBELLION Racing first raced in LMP1 in 2009, running a single Lola chassis powered by an Aston Martin V12 engine. In 2010, Rebellion Racing ran two LMP1 cars, with the Lola chassis powered by Judd’s 5.5L V10 engines. Between 2011 and 2014, the team formed a close partnership with Toyota Motorsport GmbH and using the normally aspirated 3.4L V8 Toyota engine, REBELLION Racing achieved many successes including finishing in fourth place overall at Le Mans in 2012 and again in 2014.
With a change of Technical Regulations at the start of 2014 when the LMP1 class moved to a fuel-flow restricted formula, Rebellion Racing in association with ORECA built their own LMP1 cars, the Rebellion R-Ones. The Rebellion R-One cars were initially powered by the Toyota V8 that had served the team so well and then in 2015, as the team strived for even more performance, the Rebellion R-One cars were re-engineered to use the V6 twin turbo engine from AER.
That fourth place overall finish at Le Mans in the 24 Hour race in 2014 showed that the Rebellion R-One privateer cars could mix with the Manufacturer hybrid cars. Since 2014, Manufacturer development has significantly pushed the boundaries of LMP1 and, after having been the main flag bearer for the privateer entrants in the category for the past seven seasons, REBELLION Racing will next year move to the new style LMP2.
It is an exciting time for LMP2 as new specification cars, which will be eligible to race in all the top sportscar championships around the world, are currently being unveiled by the chassis suppliers. The pace of these new LMP2 cars is forecast to be significantly quicker than the current cars and with high levels of competition between the teams and the cars, the challenge is very attractive to REBELLION Racing, we are looking forward to this new adventure.