Dumas, Duval team up at CORE for Rolex 24
FIA World Endurance champions Romain Dumas and Loic Duval will contest the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January next year with the CORE autosport prototype outfit.
Photo by: Alexander Trienitz
The pair, who have both also won the Le Mans 24 Hours and were also team-mates at the Audi LMP1 outfit in 2012, will partner team regulars Jon Bennett and Colin Braun for the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship season opener.
Dumas and Duval both have experience of the event, and have also sampled the Oreca 07 machine they will pilot in the race.
Porsche factory driver Dumas contested the Le Mans 24 Hours and the preceding Spa WEC race earlier this year for the Singatech Alpine squad, while Duval made his first WEC start since Audi quit the series in the Bahrain season finale earlier this month with G-Drive Racing.
“I’m really happy to go back to Daytona," said Dumas, who has contested the Dakar Rally in January for the past three years.
"For a long a time I’ve been looking to come back, but Dakar is always at the same time. This year, as soon as I get the opportunity with CORE, I decided not to do Dakar.
“Loic and I were teammates at Audi in 2012 and as soon as I heard it was a possibility for him to be part of the team, I was very enthusiastic."
Duval, who crashed heavily in practice on his first appearance at Daytona last year, added: “Going to Daytona for a racing driver means a lot. It was good to be there.
"The most impressive thing for me was the banking. When you’re in those corners and you’ve never done an oval or anything like that, it’s impressive to see the angle you can take.
"I spoke a little bit with Romain and he explained to me about how professional the team is. It wasn’t a surprise though, because when you are a factory team for Porsche it means a lot already. I knew that the team was first class."
CORE has been the factory Porsche team in IMSA since 2014, and won the Daytona 24 Hours' GT Daytona class that year with Nick Tandy, Richard Lietz and Patrick Pilet at the wheel of a Porsche 911 RSR.
The team previous ran a car in and won the LMPC class but switched its customer focus to the GTD division for 2017.
The 2018 IMSA opener at Daytona will mark the squad's first competitive appearance with its Oreca 07.
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