ELMS – Neveu: “Remain vigilant about costs”

The choice of Monza for the official tests of theELMS and the Prologue in WEC was it dictated by its similarities with the circuit of 24 Hours of Le Mans ?

That was not part of our criteria. We had been testing for several years at Paul-Ricard (Var) and the organizers of the Monza circuit had been making eyes at us for a while, but we didn't have room for them. The Imola circuit was a little too small to accommodate the ELMS and WEC paddocks. It's always interesting to occasionally bring about change, whether for the teams, the manufacturers... It's also media preparation for us and, if the blue stripes of Paul-Ricard are beautiful, I won't tell you the On the contrary (Gérard Neveu was the former director of the Castellet circuit), we could benefit from a reference route.

Must testing always take place on a circuit hosting an ELMS round?

No not necessarily. The only constraint we have is to carry out the ELMS tests on the same track as the WEC Prologue. This for economic reasons. You could almost say that it is the WEC Prologue which determines the location of the ELMS tests.

What do you think of the forces present in LMP2?

I will be careful not to make any predictions for the moment. We all know that teams don't necessarily aim for the best times. Nevertheless, we were able to notice a perfect balance between each category with the new LMP2s going much faster than the old ones and that all the drivers had great fun driving them. Even gentlemen drivers feel safer by being able to make the difference in traffic more easily and by being able to fully exploit the potential of the prototype, but we will have to wait 2 or 3 races to draw the first conclusions. This promises great fights on the track with reduced gaps between the drivers, especially since the three chassis seem close in terms of performance.

What about other categories?

The LMP3s are at the level we expected even if we had some scares with young drivers (reference to the accident of Gwenaël Delomier who rolled over on the Norma M30 LMP3 of M. Racing – YMR), notably due to speeds reached on this circuit which, if not very complicated, does not forgive the slightest mistake. We will not immediately have any controversy regarding the Balance of Performance either since they were relatively close, even if Porsche made a bit of a grimace at the end of the day. The GTE category is not the most prolific but we cannot field more than 40 cars either.

What about the ELMS rookie tests which were mentioned at Estoril last year?

It's neither done nor ruled out, but we have the circuit to do it. We had a lot of things to do during the winter. We already want to let the first meeting at Silverstone pass and we will then advise for the rest of the season.

Are your objectives met?

The pyramid works well. The best ELMS teams like TDS Racing are moving up to the WEC. Some teams (like Graff Racing) moved from LMP3 to LMP2 and others played the Michelin Le Mans Cup game by distributing their forces. However, we must be careful that the increase in performance and the level of structures is not accompanied by financial drift. It is not a world championship and the discipline must keep room for gentlemen drivers. To limit this, we must be vigilant about the regulations and continue discussions with the team managers, particularly at the LMP2 level. The difficulty is to remain at a high level without everything collapsing.