Conquest Endurance, which nearly won the American Le Mans Series P2 title in its first season in 2012, announced Wednesday that it plans to return to ALMS in 2013.
After 15 years in open-wheel, Conquest Racing came from IndyCar to ALMS in 2012 and found immediate success. Now the team has sold its Dallara DW12 IndyCar chassis and will focus exclusively on sports car racing for the upcoming season.
“We made this decision this week, after considering many scenarios we decided that the time for putting together a competitive program in IndyCar was running out and it was better to step back as opposed to creating a last minute program that didn’t live up to our standards,” said team principal Eric Bachelart in a press release.
“The good news is that this decision allows us to focus purely on our sportscar program, which we debuted very successfully last year. Fighting for the P2 championship with no previous endurance experience was a very positive experience for us, and we proved what we can do as a team.
“We are currently evaluating different programs for ALMS, in the P2, PC and GTC categories, where we know that once again we can build a championship-winning effort and fight for wins with the rest of the teams out there.
“We are also very excited about the unified series in 2014 as it is opening a lot of exciting possibilities for us which we will work on throughout this year.”
Conquest Endurance, a division of Conquest Racing, decided to try sports cars in 2012, working out a distributorship with Oak Racing for its Morgan P2 chassis. The team ran at Sebring with Judd power, then switched to Nissan and found success at Mosport and Road America, beating the vastly better-funded and more experienced P2 champions Level 5.
While the team no longer possesses its P2 Morgan, there are plenty of P2 chassis available for lease or possibly purchase. PC Orecas and GTC Porsches are also plentiful, so the team should have no trouble getting onto the Sebring grid even starting at this late date.
The 2013 ALMS season opens with the 61st Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring on March 16. Tickets are available through the Sebring Raceway website.
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