European Le Mans Series

With the Le Mans 24 Hours part of the World Endurance Championship, the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) adds ‘European’ to its title and is headlined by the innovative LMP2 category where the majority of the teams have chosen to race on Dunlop tyres. The GTE Pro and GTE Am cars joined by a new GTC class. All races are 6 hours in length, and only the season-opening 6 Hours of Castellet is carried over from the 2011 season allowing the launch of an exciting new calendar that takes Le Mans style racing to new audiences.

DUNLOP AND LE MANS

Dunlop has been part of endurance racing since the early days of Le Mans when the Bentley Boys achieved serial success, through the glamour years of the 1950s, when Jaguar did the same.

The cars are different today – with the Le Mans Prototypes at the forefront of technology and very far removed from what you would see on the roads, with the GT classes very highly evolved from their production car bases.

Innovative technology now a major factor in the distance events with hybrid technology knocking on the door of success. In the quest for performance and efficiency, tyres play a huge role

Endurance racing is a demanding but rewarding discipline for Dunlop’s engineers. The requirement is not only for endurance but also consistency of performance. The lessons of the long-distance races are learned to the benefit of production tyres: a cornerstone of Dunlop’s race-to-road philosophy.