British team Rebellion Racing was the first to announce that it will contest the LMP1 category at Le Mans in 2014, with a new coupe built by French company ORECA and powered by a development of the Toyota RV8KLM engine currently featured in the team’s Lola. The agreement is for three cars, two to race and one as a spare, although Rebellion says that it will consider selling customer cars should there be demand for them.
Without a hybrid system, the car will weigh 830kg and will generate a limited 148MJ per lap of energy through its internal combustion engine. Maximum petrol flow will be 93.5kg/h, but its fuel tank will be 64.4 litres, enabling it to do around 40 minutes on a tank of fuel.
This, says the team, will enable it to run just behind the factory teams, and allow them to pick up positions should their hybrid systems, or racing, cause problems. They will compete with a new car, a new hybrid system, while we will compete with a simple car, said team manager Bart Hayden. ‘We have to be efficient with the aero package but with our experience we will do a reliable car, and a quick car. The hybrid systems are very complicated.
The design of the R-One will be led by ORECA’s head of design, Christophe Guibar, who was responsible for designing the ORECA-01. The R-One is not expected to hit the track until March of 2014, meaning that it will be around ten months behind the development of the Porsche LMP1 that was testing in the week before the test session at Le Mans.
ORECA began designing the car in 2011, but it wasn’t until an agreement was reached with Rebellion in March that the process took a meaningful step forward.
There will be teething problems, but it is our job to find them, said Hayden at the launch of the programme, at the Le Mans test day in June. By starting early, has Porsche got it right? The regulations have not been fixed yet. We can be super fast and super reliable, but the development of a hybrid may not be the right way. If you say that you are never going to win, then you are going to fail.
The new regulations for 2014 provide a great opportunity for privateer LMP1 teams to challenge for overall race wins. We are motivated by the prospect of those victories and having truly established ourselves in the LMP1 category over the past seasons, we want to build upon our successes. We are delighted to be able to commit our future to the LMP1 category at such an early stage. We have chosen ORECA to develop and build the Rebellion R-One because they have a strong record of success, they have produced many successful prototype cars and they share our passion for endurance racing.
There is no decision on the suppliers for the programme, although following the demise of Lola as a supplier to customer teams, Rebellion has forged a close relationship with the Canadian Multimatic company, which designed the new aerodynamics for the car this year, and produced new dampers to improve the handling. ORECA also has a list of preferred suppliers, and these details have yet to be finalised.
British team Rebellion Racing was the first to announce that it will contest the LMP1 category at Le Mans in 2014, with a new coupe built by French company ORECA and powered by a development of the Toyota RV8KLM engine currently featured in the team’s Lola. The agreement is for three cars, two to race and one as a spare, although Rebellion says that it will consider selling customer cars should there be demand for them.