Written by:
Kevin Krefting
Dyson is the first squad to sign up for Porsche's 2007 customer program. (Porsche photo)
ยป More Photos
Dyson Racing has announced that it will field two 2007 Porsche RS Spyder prototypes in the upcoming American Le Mans Series season. The team, a winner of two ALMS championships, is also a veteran Porsche squad dating back to the early days of the Porsche 962.
"When we announced our ALMS participation in Atlanta in April 2005, it was our target to have the RS Spyder being raced by customer teams in 2007," explained Hartmut Kristen, Porsche's head of motorsport. "So having the Dyson team as a customer is exactly what we were going for.
"We will continue our development work together with the Penske Motorsports team and we are going to do all the testing with them. The results of this work and the new developments will be made available to our customer teams as well. This is a very clear arrangement. The RS Spyders for Penske and Dyson are exactly the same 2007 models, and the engines we are providing to the teams are identical as well," added Kristen, who indicated that Porsche will provide a factory race engine engineer and a Porsche RS Spyder race engineer to the Dyson team. Run as a fully-fledged factory effort, Penske was the sole squad fielding the Spyders in '06, taking the LMP2 title for the German marque.
Chris Dyson, Butch Leitzinger, Andy Wallace and Guy Smith will be Dyson's 2007 drivers, with the team's additional drivers for the Twelve Hours of Sebring still to be announced.
"We are thrilled with this new partnership," Chris Dyson offered. "The Porsche factory, the development engineers at testing, and the technical staff at the track will all be supporting our efforts. We look forward to competing against Penske Motorsports, but we know they are development partners, as well. This is a very nice step in our team's evolution, and returning to Porsche feels like coming home."
ALMS CEO Scott Atherton expressed confidence that Dyson's move from LMP1 to LMP2 would not negatively impact the "premier" class.
"We are aware of the potential effect this could have on our LMP1 class," Atherton said. "While Audi has not finalized its plans for 2007, we fully expect the diesel-powered R10 TDIs to be actively competing in the American Le Mans Series. We are proud and pleased to see the commitment of Michael Lewis and everyone at Autocon Motorsports for their two-car LMP1 effort for next season. In addition there also has been significant interest from Creation Autosportif following its tremendous showing at Road Atlanta and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and the same can be said about Zytek and its potential participation next year. Needless to say we believe the content and quality of our premier class will continue to be a focal point and featured element of the American Le Mans Series."
