AF Corse Ferrari to contest Asian Le Mans Series
The world championship-winning AF Corse Ferrari team will contest the new Asian Le Mans Series, which kicks off in South Korea in August
AF, which won the GTE Pro teams' title in last year's World Endurance Championship and helped Ferrari to the GTE manufacturers' crown, will field a solo GT3-spec 458 Italia in the GTC class of the four-race series.
The car will be raced by Ferrari factory driver Andrea Bertolini, former Krohn Racing WEC racer Michele Rugolo and Australian Steve Wyatt, who is graduating from the Asian-Pacific Ferrari Challenge.
Team boss Amato Ferrari stressed that AF's involvement in the series was purely on a customer basis.
"We are very happy to be doing the new Asian series," he said. "This is customer programme run by AF Corse; we have had a request to run a car."
The AF announcement is one of number expected as the start of the series at the Autopia circuit on August 4 approaches.
Confirmation of an entry from a team running a Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG is expected soon.
Series promoter Mark Thomas is predicting a grid of 16 to 20 cars for the series. He suggested that up to 80 per cent of the filed will be made up of cars competing in the GTC classes.
GTC, which is open to GT3 and GT300 Super GT machinery, is now the premier GT class after GTE was dropped last month. A sub-class, known as GTC Am, is open to cars from a number of one-make series in Asia.
Two LMP2 prototypes have been entered for the series: a works Morgan-Nissan LMP2 from OAK Racing; and an similar car run by the KCMG squad, which is the first Chinese team to be granted an entry for the Le Mans 24 Hours.
Further P2s could join the series before the end of the season, Thomas said.
"We are talking to five or six teams about running LMP2s in the series," explained Thomas. "From those we can hopefully anticipate another couple of cars joining the field this season."
The Asian Le Mans Series, which was cut from six to four races in April, also takes in races at Fuji in Japan, the Chinese Zhuhai circuit and Sentul in Indonesia.
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