New Team for ALMS

[trackside]

Posted on 1 April on the official ALMS website:

The American Le Mans Series presented by Tequila Patrón added another world-renowned manufacturer – and yet another energy source! – to its grid Thursday. Delorean and its DMC-12 model have been given special waivers to compete in the world’s leading sports car championship.

To no one’s great surprise, the rear-engined beast will be powered by the revolutionary Mr. Fusion system which the yet-to-be-named team will feed with non-recyclable materials collected from the pressrooms throughout the weekend. Popular items include cheeseburgers, leftover gummy bears, sunblock and corrupted compact flash cars; the latter will be donated by angry photographers!

Among other components, Mr. Fusion will power the Delorean’s Flux Capacitor. The device is the first (and perhaps still best) example of automotive drivetrain innovation – which will be completely at home with the Global Leader of Green Racing.

This has presented some challenges, though. The IMSA technical staff has been hard at work making sure the Delorean does not enjoy special advantages, such as time travel that would allow it to complete 12 Hours at Sebring in roughly 1.2 seconds. As a result – and as a balance to its tremendous economical advantage – IMSA will fit the DMC-12 with a 1955mm restrictor to keep speeds below 88 mph. It will run in the newly created GTCC – Grand Touring Challenge Classic – class. It will run alongside another new class – Le Mans Prototype Challenge Classic – giving the Series six (count ’em…SIX!) races within a race.

“The way I see it, if you're gonna build a road car into a race car, why not do it with some style?” we overheard from one source close to the project. For some reason, he reminded us a bit of Christopher Lloyd…

Existing teams already are prepping for the challenge. In particular, Corvette Racing never backs down from a challenge.

“We welcome new additions to the Series!” quipped Corvette Racing program manager Doug Fehan, whose cars run on cellulosic E85. “In keep with our mindset of focus of concentration in the MICHELIN GREEN X Challenge, fusion power will be a welcomed entry. Clearly we’ll have to go back and do more homework!”