Sportscars Features

At 3.00am on Friday morning David Brabham, Jan Magnussen and Bryan Herta faced the realization that they could miss this year's Le Mans 24 Hour.

The Le Mans timetable means that Friday is a day with no track activity, giving the teams the opportunity to prepare their cars for tomorrow's race. Running the two MG Sport and Racing cars is the CMS team - led by the hugely experienced Hugh Chamberlain.

The aurally-exciting Morgan Aero 8 is rapidly turning into the car the Le Mans crowd are adopting this year. A superb lap from Le Mans rookie Richard Hay ensured the car easily qualified in the GT category, and Crash asked Richard how he was enjoying his Le Mans:

ORECA Group, leaders in endurance racing, and Dassault System's today announced that ORECA Motorsport uses CATIA V5 and SMARTEAM solutions for designing the prototypes for their new 24 hours of Le Mans cars.

MG Sport and Racing will start the 2002 Le Mans 24-Hours with their cars sixth and twelfth on the 50-car grid.

Klaus Zwart's Ascari marque enter this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans with only a single Judd powered KZR1 LMP900 prototype after being snubbed by the French race organisers but after going on a winter diet the car is much lighter and still hasn't lost her looks.

Nevada born TJ Bell will drive the British sportscar marque Ascari at this years 24 Hours of Le Mans, joining Briton Ben Collins and South African Werner Lupberger as the team looks to take on the might of the German and American manufacturers.

MG Sport and Racing will be out in force at Silverstone on Monday when - in a real treat for motorsport fans - the MG Lola EX257 Le Mans car will put in some demonstration laps of the circuit.

The Morgan Motor Company is celebrating its return to the race track at Le Mans with special commemorative editions of its classic Plus 8 and 4/4 sports cars.

Complete results from the May 5th test day at the 8.62-mile Le Mans circuit in France: Preliminaries [Sunday, May 5]:

Team Ascari's 'grand tour' of the sports car racing classics continues as the Banbury, Oxfordshire, team heads to Le Mans this weekend for the obligatory test day.

Team Ascari has today announced that Britain's Ben Collins will drive with South African Werner Lupberger at this years 24 Hours of Le Mans as the British sportscar marque makes its final preparations for the weekends preliminary practice sessions in France.

Briton Guy Smith begins his duties as official test driver for Team Bentley next week, when he joins three-day endurance test at the Paul Ricard circuit in the south of France.

For American Le Mans Series driver Kevin Buckler, the chance to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a dream come true.

KnightHawk Racing has commissioned an all-new graphic design for it's MG Lola 675 LMP, and this new design will debut on the team's prototype at the Le Mans Practice Session.

Eric van de Poele was counting his blessings last night, after surviving what Bentley team manager Richard Lloyd called "the highest speed accident anyone can witness".

Le Mans is the one of the toughest test in motorsport for both man and machine, and to prepare for this year's event, the MG Sport and Racing team visited the Lausitzring circuit in Germany to put the MG Lola EX257 through its paces.

The LMP 675 class at this year's 70th running of the Le Mans 24-Hours will feature three of the rapid MG Lola EX257 sportscars.

Audi's driver line-up for the 2002 Le Mans 24 Hours has been completed, as expected, by the addition of three German speaking drivers to drive its third R8 prototype.

Le Mans 24 Hours organiser, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest [ACO], has confirmed receipt of 96 entries for this year's 70th running of the round-the-clock marathon on 15-16 June.

Exactly 40 years after Morgan's last competitive entry at Le Mans, when Christopher Lawrence, now Chief Development Engineer at Morgan Motor Company, drove a Morgan Plus 4 through the chequered flag to win the 2.0-litre class, a Morgan is set to return to the world's most prestigious race.

Intersport Racing has announced that it has purchased a new MG Lola EX257 to contest the entire 2002 American Le Mans Series schedule in the LMP 675 class.

MG Sport and Racing Limited have today announced Mark Blundell as Ambassador for the MG XPOWER programme at their 2002 motorsport reveal at Longbridge.

British sportscar brand Aston Martin could be joining the ranks of Le Mans starters in the near future, following the unveiling of plans to take the company to the top of its market.