REBELLION Racing and Toyota Motorsport GmbH have confirmed their plansfor a Le Mans Prototype LMP1 engine supply partnership. The agreement will seetwo REBELLION Racing Lola LMP1 cars powered by Toyota engines, commencingwith the 2011 season when REBELLION Racing will be the exclusive partner ofToyota Motorsport in LMP1.
Alexandre Pesci, Rebellion Racing Team Principal: "This agreement is thecornerstone of REBELLION's challenge for the forthcoming season. Toyota is animpressive and remarkable industrial giant, we are proud to have been selected byToyota Motorsport as their partner in this project. It means a lot for our team to havesecured their support in our efforts to target the victory."
Bart Hayden, Rebellion Racing Team Manager: "We are delighted to become apartner of Toyota Motorsport and are excited about working alongside a companywith a Formula One background and a rich history at Le Mans. We look forward toestablishing a strong and long term relationship with them."
Yoshiaki Kinoshita, Toyota Motorsport President: “Toyota Motorsport has recentexperience of engine supply partnerships from our Formula One days so we aredrawing on that to deliver a reliable and competitive engine. We are looking forwardto working with REBELLION Racing on this exciting project and it was very pleasingto see this engine running in a car for the first time, particularly because theperformance, as well as the reliability, was very encouraging.”
Martin Birrane, Executive Chairman of Lola Group: “Lola is delighted to be the 2011LMP constructor of choice for Toyota Motorsport and REBELLION Racing.Supporting our customers at the very highest level has always been and will continueto be very important to Lola. We once again look forward to taking the challenge tothe factory works teams next year.”
The partnership between REBELLION Racing and Toyota Motorsport started someweeks ago when, as the first result of combined work from Lola and SebahAutomotive, an interim Lola-Toyota was shaken down in early October at Snettertonin the UK.
At the end of October, REBELLION Racing and Toyota Motorsport engineersconducted an evaluation test programme at Portimao, Portugal and Monteblanco,Spain. The Lola-Toyota test car achieved high mileage, providing valuable data andexperience in terms of performance and reliability with the Toyota engine.
REBELLION Racing has also announced that the team have renewed thecontracts of its regular 2010 drivers. Neel Jani / Nicolas Prost and Andrea Belicchi /Jean-Christophe Boullion will again spearhead the REBELLION Racing attack. Theirqualities and performances during the 2010 Le Mans Series and Le Mans 24 Hourswith the Lola-Rebellion LMP1 cars led the Swiss team to renew their partnership forthe 2011 season. The additional drivers for the 24 Hours of Le Mans will beannounced at a later date.
