ILMC will spread Le Mans magic around the world

In a press conference at the Museum of the 24 Hours in Le Mans the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) announced their plans to bring the Le Mans magic to most continents around the world. By creating the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC), a new ...

In a press conference at the Museum of the 24 Hours in Le Mans the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) announced their plans to bring the Le Mans magic to most continents around the world. By creating the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC), a new worldwide endurance racing series ACO will use the best races of all associated Le Mans Series around the world, with the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans race as jewel on the schedule.

ACO annual press conference: ACO President Jean-Claude Plassart.

Photo by Eric Gilbert.

ACO wants to develop the series completely in the Le Mans spirit, including the atmosphere at the track and racing at nighttime. Like at Le Mans, ACO will try to create a good mixture between Prototypes and GT cars in all other races. The series should give the manufacturers a healthy platform to develop new technologies, focused on environment friendly solutions, including reducing fuel usage, noise and carbon footprint.

The series will already kick off in the second half of 2010 with the Silverstone 1000 km race (September 10 - 12), after which the series also will travel to North-America for the Petit Le Mans (September 29 - October 2) and Asia for the 6 hours of Zuhai at the Zhuhai International Circuit (November 5 - 7).

For 2011, the ILMC schedule will grow to seven races and will start in March with the 12 Hours of Sebring or the Laguna Seca 6 hours race. The schedule will include 2 races of all associated Le Mans Series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans race.

Provisional 2011 Intercontinental Le Mans Cup schedule:
1. Sebring 12 hours (March) *
2. Spa 100km (May) *
3. 24 Hours of Le Mans (June)
4. Silverstone 1000 km (September)*
5. Petit Le Mans, Atlanta (September - October)*
6. Mount Fuji 1000 km (end of October)
7. 6 hours of China at a not yet designated Chinese track (mid November)
* still to be confirmed.

These plans will also have its effect on the selection procedure for Le Mans. All fulltime ILMC entries are expected to be automatically included in the entry list. For all other entrants, the selection comity will stay the same.