For the 2013 season, the Swiss team will continue to campaign their Lola B12/60 Toyota powered cars and they will kick off the year in the United States of America at the 61st edition of the 12 Hours of Sebring, hoping to pick up from where they left off having won outright the last race of the 2012 ALMS season, the 15th edition of Petit le Mans in Atlanta
In 2011, REBELLION Racing won the Le Mans Series LMP1 Team championship and in 2012 REBELLION Racing won the FIA WEC Endurance Trophy for LMP1 Private Teams. With an LMP1 car in the 2013 ALMS, REBELLION Racing will be looking to secure overall race wins throughout the season.
REBELLION Racing will run a second LMP1 Lola-Toyota at the 12 Hours of Sebring, the opening round of the 2013 ALMS. The drivers that will participate in the 2013 ALMS races and the 12 Hours of Sebring will be announced at a later date.
In the 2012 FIA WEC Endurance LMP1 Trophy, REBELLION Racing’s Lola-Toyota cars secured six wins from eight races (Spa-Francorchamps, Le Mans, Silverstone, Sao Paulo, Fuji and Shanghai) and six pole positions, but these results were overshadowed by the overall results of the Manufacturer cars.
In the 2013 American Le Mans Series, REBELLION Racing will be going into the races with the objective of winning the race overall, as the Swiss team did at Petit Le Mans in the finale of the 2012 championship.
The REBELLION Racing team’s main partners have found in the American Le Mans Series a championship that matched well with their objectives and needs. The visibility in the media and feedback from their staff and guests was very positive.
To date, LMP1 privateer teams in the FIA World Endurance Championship have been in the shadow of the Factory teams and even when they win their class and score maximum points, the visibility that they get has generally not matched partners’ and teams’ expectations. But, being part of an FIA World Championship is a great honour and carries a certain amount of prestige, so the Swiss team is now also working on securing a second programme for 2013 based around the FIA World Endurance Championship and Le Mans 24 Hours.
Bart Hayden, REBELLION Racing Team Manager :
”2012 was the most demanding, but also the most successful season in the history of the REBELLION Racing team. We won the FIA WEC Endurance Trophy for Private LMP1 Teams with six victories from eight races, including Le Mans, where we finished fourth overall and prevented a clean-sweep by the Manufacturer cars; added to that, in our only race in the ALMS we took the overall victory to win Petit le Mans.
We want to build upon those results in 2013 and aim to add to our tally of overall race wins. The visibility generated by overall wins is more in line with what our partners require and desire. The WEC is a World Championship and we would like to find a way to continue racing there too. Over the coming weeks, we will be striving to put together a programme to complement our presence in the ALMS.
We are a team that has grown up with the Le Mans spirit since our involvement in the GT class in the early 2000’s and we want to continue racing in championships that mix the very best professional prototype and GT teams. I will be particularly pleased if we can succeed in finding a way to run cars in both the ALMS and the FIA WEC in 2013.”