Lowe's Fernandez Racing will, as expected, replace its Lola with a Courage-based Acura ARX-01b chassis for its second year in the American Le Mans Series, bringing it in line with fellow Acura stable-mates Andretti Green Racing and Highcroft Racing.
The #15 car will once again be piloted by Adrian Fernandez and Luis Diaz, who recorded three podiums and six top five results in 2007, and is the latest version of the ARX-01a chassis developed by Honda Performance Development through a technical partnership with Wirth Research in England.
The ARX-01a was campaigned by Andretti Green and Highcroft this season, with the two teams combining for one win and seven podiums as well as an additional three top five finishes in twelve events.
The opportunity to run an ARX chassis next season greatly adds to our resource base, noted the team's MD Tom Anderson, Not only will we benefit from the substantial development work by HPD, Wirth and the AGR and Highcroft teams to date, but we will be able to contribute to that database as we begin to operate as part of a three-car effort on all fronts.
All three Acura teams utilised the 3.4-litre Acura LM V8 during the 2007 campaign, a unit designed and developed at HPD as its first effort in race car design and development. The chassis made its debut in a twelve-hour simulation run at Sebring in February.
We are very pleased to have Lowe's Fernandez Racing compete with our latest version of the Acura P2 chassis in 2008, admitted HPD president Robert Clarke, As the assigned engine development team within Acura's ALMS programme, Lowe's Fernandez worked well with our HPD engineers and contributed significantly to the development of the LM V8 engine, our win in the Twelve Hours of Sebring and our perfect reliability record in our inaugural season.
