The Oreca 03 LMP2 evolves for 2012

The Oreca 03 LMP2 performed very well in 2011 as it won the Manufacturers' title with Nissan in LMS and the Teams title with Signatech Nissan in ILMC. But Oreca wants to add a victory to this list of 24 Hours of Le Mans, a success which was won by the Zyek-Nissan of Geaves Motorsports last year. If the new regulations put in place forced the engineers to review their copy, the result seems to live up to expectations. The shark fin is now clearly visible on the bodywork of the LMP2 but Christophe Guibbal, the director of the design office, assures that the developments are multiple.

“We wanted to improve the car at all levels, confirms the latter. Significant work has been carried out to make the car more reliable and optimized. This concerns in particular the steering and the exhaust system, but also several mechanical elements such as the suspension. These regulatory changes are not without consequences, particularly in terms of pure performance. The openings on the front and rear hoods lead to a loss of finesse: this creates greater drag and more aero downforce. Logically, the first objective was to find the right aero balance by introducing new aero elements and we managed to obtain better finesse. Visually, the most striking new feature is certainly the shark fin. But we have perhaps less visible solutions that are effective, such as the splitter which has been the subject of special treatment. » Although in search of performance, the Signes engineers constantly kept the philosophy of this LMP2 category in the back of their minds, and therefore paid attention to the final cost of the new version of their prototype. “We sought the interest of our customer teams rather than commercial interest. We could have done completely different aerodynamics, designed a completely new car around our monocoque. This would not have made sense in relation to the spirit of the category. »

The Oreca 03 version 2012 should make its first rounds at the end of January. The press release specifies that to date, six teams will enter the prototype designed in the Signes workshops, whether in the World Championship.Endurance (WEC) or European Le Mans Series (ELMS).