07
May
2017
|
17:05 PM
Europe/Amsterdam

Dunlop’s European Le Mans teams head to Italy for round two of series

  • Data: Teams have benefit of pre-season test data
  • Medium and medium-plus slick compounds in LMP2 nominated
  • GTE soft compound makes first race appearance of 2017
  • Corvette joins GTE class bringing manufacturer tally to four

The Monza circuit hosts the second round of the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) on 14th May, the 4 Hours of Monza. Teams visited the Italian track near Milan at the end of March for pre-season testing, so Dunlop and its teams have specific track data for the 2017 cars, the only race on the calendar with that advantage.

Teams competed at the first round in the UK last month with six different car manufacturers filling the LMP2 and GTE podiums. In the premier class, LMP2, Dunlop teams took the top seven places, with United Autosports taking the 4 Hours of Silverstone race win in the Ligier, with G-Drive Racing’s Oreca and High Class Racing’s Dallara completing the podium. TF Sport won the all-Dunlop GTE category, followed by Proton Competition’s Porsche 911 RSR 991 and Beechdean AMR Aston Martin Vantage V8s.

Monza is a circuit with similar characteristics to Le Mans, where several of the ELMS teams will compete in the iconic 24 Hour race in June, albeit the ELMS tyres are a different specification to the World Endurance Championship GTE tyres. For the Monza event, Dunlop is nominating the medium and medium-plus options for dry weather for the LMP2 teams as available at the pre-season test and for the Silverstone race. The GTE teams will have the first opportunity to compete on the soft option tyre to complement the medium option that was favoured at Silverstone.

The same LMP2 line-up will race at Monza as competed at Silverstone, with ten of the twelve cars choosing Dunlop tyres. In the GTE class, a new entry to the series will take the total of entrants to seven with the Labre team fielding a Corvette making four different manufacturers competing in the class, joining the Ferraris, Porsches and Aston Martins.


Paul Bryant, International Event Manager, Dunlop Motorsport

 “We have useful data from Silverstone to move us further forward with learning the new cars. Having 17000km of data from the Monza test helps us a great deal with optimising tyres and developing tyre strategies with our partners. We are building up information, including wet and intermediate data, although we must be mindful that Monza in mid-May will have significantly higher track and ambient temperatures than at the pre-season test or at Silverstone. With that in mind we have allocated the softer compound for the GT cars.”

The European Le Mans Series 4 Hours of Monza starts at 2.30pm local time on Sunday 14th May.

Entry list including Dunlop teams can be found here​:

Dunlop 2017 Tyres

LMP2 – Set specification (soft, medium, medium-plus, intermediate, wet)

Open tyre competition
Two out of three dry specifications nominated per event
Tyres permitted per 4 hour event: 2 sets free practice + 3 sets qualifying and race + two single tyres anytime during event

The LMP2 range is the same new range that features in WEC. The different conditions of Europe, generally cooler, combined with the improved operating windows, will tend to favour the soft and medium options in ELMS.

LMGTE – All-Dunlop class (soft, medium, medium-plus, intermediate, wet)

Controlled/single brand tyres for each of four manufacturers represented

Tyres permitted per 4 hour event: unlimited
Two out of three dry specifications nominated per event
Confidential 2017 tyre range – supervised use with greater performance

The ELMS LMGTE range is again all-new for 2017.