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"ACO Drops Le Mans Evo Package
The future of the Le Mans 24 hours is for what the race organisers describe as "real prototypes" rather than cars styled after road-going sportscars. Le Mans has revealed that it has all but abandoned plans for a new generation of prototypes, which was dubbed as the LMP Evo class when it was announced in June. These prototypes, exclusively coupes, would have been eligible from 2009 and then entirely replaced the current LMP1 prototypes by 2011. The news means coupes and open cars will co-exist for the foreseenable future. Le Mans sporting director Daniel Poissenot said "What we want to do is to keep real prototypes. Any technical evolutions will concern only saftey and performance. We will make an announcement in June" Poissenot suggested that the reasons behind the decision not to push ahead with the new rules resulted from a lack of enthusiasm from potential new manufacturers and opposition from those already involved in LMP1. Le Mans has been backing away from its commitment to force everyone to race evo coupes for some time and repeatedly hinted that there was a lon-term future for open-top cars. The apparent abandonment of the evo class has been well received. Peugeot Sport team manager Serge Saulnier said: "When you see the success of the LMP1 class at the moment and all the new cars coming, it would be stupid to change the rules""
Me on a now defunt forum
I think that this is a good decision, i'm been hoping this would happen for a long time now, getting rid of open-topped cars from Le Mans would just be bad for everyone. The fans, the teams, the drivers, the premoters. But anyway, some good did come from this idea, Lola, Epsilon and Dome have all built coupes for Le Mans!
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